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A HIGH WIND
IN JAMAICA
By
RICHARD HUGHES
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LONDON
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“First published 1929
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Copyright 1929 in the U.S.A. under the title of —
. “The Innocent Voyage,’
now called
“A High Wind in Jamaica.’
Printed in Great Britain: all rights reserved
A HIGH WIND
IN JAMAICA
Chapter 1
NE of the fruits of Emancipation in the
( )ve Indian islands is the number of the
tuins, either attached to the houses that
remain ot within a stone’s throw of them: ruined
slaves’ quarters, ruined sugar-grinding houses,
ruined boiling houses; often ruined magsions that
wete too expensive to maintain. Earthquake, fire,
rain, and deadlier vegetation, did their work quickly.
One scene is very clear in my mind, in Jamaica.
There was a vast stone-built house called Derby
Hill (where the Parkers lived). It had been the
centre of a vety prosperous plantation. With
Emancipation, like many others, that went bung.
The sugar buildings fell down. Bush smothered
the cane and guinea-gtass. ‘The field negroes left
their cottages in a body, to be somewhere less dis-
turbed by even the possibility of work. ‘Then the
house negroes’ quarters burned down, and the three
remaining faithful servants occupied the mansion.
The two heiresses of all this, the Miss Parkers,
grew old; and were by education incapable. And
I
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
the scene is this: coming to Derby Hill on some
business or other, and wading waist-deep in bushes
up to the front door, now lashed permanently open
by a rank plant. The jalousies of the house had
been all torn down, and then supplanted as dark-
eners, by powerful vines : and out of this crumb-
ling half-vegetable gloom an old negtess peered,
wrapped in filthy brocade. The two old Miss
Parkers lived in bed, for the negroes had taken
away all their clothes: they were nearly starved.
Drinking water was brought, in two cracked Wor-
cester cups and three coconut shells on a silver
salver. Presently one of the heiresses persuaded
her tyrants to lend her an old print dress, and
came and pottered about in the mess half-heart-
edly : tried to wipe the old blood and feathers of
slaughtered chickens from a gilt and marble table :
tried to talk sensibly: tried to wind an ormolu
clock : and then gave it up and mooned away back
to bed. Not long after this, I believe, they were
both starved altogether to death. Or, if that were
hardly possible in so prolific a country, perhaps
given ground glass—rumour varied. At any
rate, they died.
That is the sort of scene which makes a deep
impression on the mind; far deeper than the
ordinary, less romantic, everyday thing which
shows the real state of an island in the statistical
2
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
sense. Of course, even in the transition period
one only found melodrama like this in rare patches.
Mote truly typical was Ferndale, for instance, an
estate about fifteen miles away from Derby Hill.
Only the overseet’s house here remained: the
Big House had altogether collapsed and been
smothered over. It consisted of a ground floor of
Stone, given over to goats and the children, and a
first floor of wood, the inhabited part, reached
from outside by a double flight of wooden steps.
When the earthquakes came the upper part only
slid about a little, and could be jacked back into
position with big levers. The roof was of
shingles : after very dry weather it leaked like a
sieve, and the first few days of the rainy season
would be spent in a perpetual general-post of beds
and other furniture to escape the drips, until the
wood swelled.
The people who lived there at the time I have in
mind were the Bas-Thorntons : not natives of the
Island, ‘Creoles,’ but a family from England,
Mr. Bas-Thornton had a business of some kind in
St. Anne’s, and used to ride there every day on a
mule. He had such long legs that his stunted
mount made him look rather ridiculous: and being
quite as temperamental as a mule himself, a quarrel
between the two was generally worth watching.
Close to the dwelling were the ruined grinding
3
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
and boiling houses. These two are never quite
cheek by jowl: the grinding house is set on higher
ground, with a water-wheel to turn the immense
iron vertical rollers. From these the cane juice
runs down a wedge-shaped trough to the boiling
house, where a negro stands and rinses a little
lime-wash into it with a grass brush to make it
granulate. © Then it is emptied into big copper
vats, over furnaces burning faggots and ‘trash,’ or
squeezed-out cane. There a few negroes stand,
skimming the poppling vats with long-handled
copper ladles, while their friends sit round, eating
sugar or chewing trash, in a mist of hot vapour.
What they skim off oozes across the floor with an
admixture of a good deal of filth—inse&s, even
rats, and. whatever sticks to negroes’ feet—into
another basin, thence to be distilled into rum.
This, at any rate, is how it used to be done. I
know nothing of modern methods—or if there are
any, never having visited the island since 1860,
which is a long time ago now.
But long before that year all this was over at
Ferndale: the big copper vats were overturned,
and up in the grinding house the three great rollers
lay about loose. No water reached it: the stream
had gone about its own business elsewhere. The
Bas-Thornton childrén used to crawl into the cut-
well through the vent, among dead leaves and the
4
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
wreck of the wheel. There, one day, they found
a wild-cat’s nest, with the mother away. The
kittens were tiny, and Emily tried to carry them
home in her pinafore ; but they bit and scratched
so fiercely, right through her thin frock, that she
was vety glad—except for pride—that they all
escaped but one. This one, Tom, grew up:
though he was never really tamed. Later he begat
several litters on an old tame cat they had, Kitty
Cranbrook ; and the only survivor of this pro-
geny, Tabby, became tather a famous cat in his
way. (But Tom soon took to the jungle alto-
gether.) Tabby was faithful, and a good swimmer,
which he would do for pleasure, sculling around
the bathing-pool behind the children, giving an
occasional yowl of excitement. Also, he had
mottal sport with snakes : would wait for a rattler
ot a black-snake like a mere mouse: drop on it
from a tree ot somewhere, and fight it to death.
Once he got bitten, and they all wept bitterly, ex-
pecting to see a spectacular death-agony ; but he
just went off into the bush and probably ate some-
thing, for he came back in a few days quite cock-a-
hoop and as ready to eat snakes as ever.
Red-headed John’s room was full of rats: he
used to catch them in big gins, and then let them
go for Tabby to despatch. Once the cat was so
impatient he seized trap and all and caterwauled off
5
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
into the night banging it on the stones and sending
up showers of sparks. Again he returned ina few
days, very sleek and pleased: but John never saw
his trap again. Another plague of his were the
bats, which also infested his room in hundreds.
Mr. Bas-Thornton could crack a stockwhip, and
used to kill a bat on the wing with it most neatly.
But the din this made in that little box of a room
at midnight was infernal: earsplitting cracks, and
the air already full of the tiny penetrating squeaks
of the vermin.
It was a kind of paradise for English children to
come to, whatever it might be for their parents :
especially at that time, when no one lived in at all
a wild way at home. Here one had to be a little
ahead of the times: or decadent, whichever you
like to call it. The difference between boys and
girls, for instance, had to be left to look after itself.
Long hair would have made the evening search
for grass-ticks and nits interminable: Emily and
Rachel had their hair cut short, and were allowed
to do everything the boys did—to climb trees,
swim, and trap animals and birds: they even had
two pockets in their frocks.
It was round the bathing-pool their life centred,
mote than the house. Every year, when the rains
were ovet, a dam was built across the stream, so
that all through the dry season there was quite
6
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
a large pool to swim in. There wete trees all
round : enormous fluffed cotton trees, with coffee
ttees between their paws, and log-wood, and got-
geous ted and green peppers : amongst them, the
pool was almost completely shaded. Emily and
John set tree-springes in them—Lame-foot Sam
taught them how. Cut a bendy stick, and tie a
string to one end. ‘Then sharpen the other, so
that it can impale a fruit as bait. Just at the base
of this point flatten it a little, and bore a hole
through the flat part. Cut a little peg that will
just Stick in the mouth of this hole. Then make a
loop in the end of the string : bend the stick, as in
stringing a bow, till the loop will thread through
the little hole, and jam it with the peg, along which
the loop should lie spread. Bait the point, and
_ hang it ina tree among the twigs : the bird alights
on the peg to peck the fruit, the peg falls out, the
loop whips tight round its ankles: then away up
out of the water like pink predatory monkeys, and
decide by ‘ Eena, deena, dina, do,’ or some such
tigmarole, whether to twist its neck or let it go
free—thus the excitement and suspense, both for
child and bird, can be prolonged beyond the
moment of capture.
It was only natural that Emily should have great
ideas of improving the negroes. They wete, of
course, Christians, so there was nothing to be done
7
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
about theit morals: nor were they in need of soup,
ot knitted things ; but they were sadly ignorant.
After a good deal of negotiation they consented in
the end to let her teach Little Jim to read : but she
had no success. Also she had a passion for catch-
ing house-lizards without their dropping their tails
off, which they do when frightened: it needed
endless patience to get them whole and unalarmed
into a match-box. Catching green grass-lizards
was also very delicate. She would sit and whistle,
like Orpheus, till they came out of their crannies
and showed their emotion by puffing out their
pink throats: then, very gently, she would lasso
them with a long blade of grass. Her room was
full of these and other pets, some alive, others
ptobably dead. She also had tame fairies ; anda
familiar, or oracle, the White Mouse with an
Elastic Tail, who was always ready to settle any
point in question, and whose tule was a rule of
iron—especially over Rachel, Edward, and Laura,
the little ones (or Liddlies, as they came to be
known in the family). ‘To Emily, his interpreter,
he allowed, of course, certain privileges : and with
John, who was older than Emily, he quite wisely
did not interfere.
He was omnipresent: the fairies were more
localised, living in a small hole in the hill guarded
by two dagger-plants.
8
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
The best fun at the bathing-pool was had with a
big forked log. John would sit astride the main
stem, and the others pushed him about by the two
prongs. ‘The little ones, of course, only splashed
about the shallow end: but Johnand Emily dived.
John, that is to say, dived properly, head-fore-
most: Emily only jumped in feet first, stiff as a
tod; but she, on the other hand, would go off
higher boughs than he would. Once, when she
was eight, Mrs. Thornton had thought she was
too big to bathe naked any more. ‘The only
bathing-dress she could rig was an old cotton
night-gown. Emily jumped in as usual : first the
balloons of ait tipped her upside down, and then
the wet cotton wrapped itself round her head and
arms and neatly drowned her. After that, decency
was let go hang again: it is hardly worth being
drowned for—at least, it does not at first sight
appear to be.
But once a negro really was drowned in the pool.
He had gorged himself full of stolen mangoes :
and feeling guilty, thought he might as well also
cool himself in the forbidden pond, and make
one tepentance cover two crimes. He could not
swim, and had only a child (Little Jim) with him.
The cold water and the surfeit brought on an
apoplexy : Jim poked at him with a piece of stick
a little, and then tan away in a fright. Whether
9
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
the man died of the apoplexy or the drowning was
a point for an inquest ; and the doétor, after Stay-
ing at Ferndale for a week, decided it was from
drowning, but that he was full of green mangoes
tight up to his mouth. The great advantage of
this was that no negro would bathe there again,
for fear the dead man’s ‘ duppy,’ or ghost, should
catch him: So if any black even came near while
they were bathing, John and Emily would pretend
the duppy had grabbed at them, and off he would
go, terribly upset. Only one of the negroes at
Ferndale had ever actually seen a duppy : but that
was quite enough. They cannot be mistaken for
living people, because their heads are turned back-
watds on their shoulders, and they carry a chain :
moreover one must never call them duppies to
their faces, as it gives them power. This poor
man forgot, and called out ‘ Duppy!’ when he
saw it. He got terrible rheumatics.
Lame-foot Sam told most stories. He used to sit
all day on the stone barbecues where the pimento
was dried, digging maggots out of his toes. This
seemed at first very horrid to the children, but he
seemed quite contented: and when jiggers got
under their own skins, and laid their little bags of
eggs there, it was not absolutely unpleasant. John
used to get quite a sort of thrill from rubbing the
place. Sam told them the Anansi stories: Anansi
10
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
and the Tiger, and how Anansi looked after the
Crocodile’s nursery, and so on. Also he had a
little poem which impressed them very much :
Quacko Sam
Him bery fine man :
Him dance all de dances dat de darkies can:
Him dance de schottische, him dance de Cod Reel :
Him dance ebery kind of dance till him foot-bottom
peel.
Perhaps that was how old Sam’s own affliction:
first came about: he was very sociable. He was
said to have a great many children.
ii
The stream which fed the bathing-hole ran into
it down a gully through the bush which offered an
enticing vista for exploring: but somehow the
children did not often go up it very far. Every
Stone had to be overturned in the hope of finding
crayfish: or if not, John had to take a sporting
gun, which he bulleted with spoonfuls of water to
shoot humming-birds on the wing, too tiny frail
quarry for any solider projectile. For, only a few
yatds up, there was a Frangipani tree: a mass of
brilliant blossom and no leaves, which was almost
hidden in a cloud of humming-birds so vivid.as
much to outshine the flowers. Writers have often
II
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
lost their way trying to explain how brilliant a
jewel the humming-bird is: it cannot be done.
They build their wee woollen nests on the tops
of twigs, where no snake can reach them. ‘They
ate devoted to theit eggs, and will not move
though you touch them. But they are so delicate
the children never did that : they held their breath
and stared and stared—and were out-stared.
Somehow the celestial vividness of this barrier
generally arrested them: it was seldom they ex-
plored further : only once, I think, on a day when
Emily was feeling peculiarly irritated.
It was her own tenth birthday. They had
frittered away all the morning in the glass-like
gloom of the bathing-hole. Now John sat naked
on the bank making a wicker trap. In the shallows
the small ones rolled and chuckled. Emily, for
coolness, sat up to her chin in water, and hundreds
of infant fish were tickling with their inquisitive
mouths evety inch of her body, a sort of expres-
sionless light kissing.
Anyhow she had lately come to hate being
touched—but this was abominable. At last, when
she could stand it no longer, she clambered out
and dressed. Rachel and Laura were too small
for a long walk: and the last thing, she felt, that
she wanted was to have one of the boys with her :
so she stole quietly past John’s back, scowling
12
Ww
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
balefully at him for no petticular reason. Soon
she was out of sight among the bushes.
She pushed on rather fast, not taking much
notice of things, up the river bed for about three
miles. She had never been so far afield befote.
Then her attention was caught by a clearing lead-
ing down to the water: and here was the soutce
of the river. She caught her breath delightedly :
it bubbled up cleat and cold, through three dis-
tiné springs, under a clump of bamboos, just as a
tivet should: the greatest possible find, and a
ptivate discovery of her own. She gave instant-
aneous inward thanks to God for thinking of such
a perfect birthday treat, especially as things had
seemed to be going all wrong : and then began to
ferret in the limestone sources with the whole
length of her arm, among the ferns and cresses.
Heating a splash, she looked round. Some
half-dozen strange negto children had come down
the clearing to fetch water and were staring at her
in astonishment. Emily stared back. In sudden
terror they flung down their calabashes and gal-
loped away up the clearing like hares. Immedi-
ately, but with dignity, Emily followed them.
The clearing nartowed to a path, and the path led
in a very short time to a village.
It was all ragged and unkempt, and shrill with
voices. ‘There were small one-storey wattle huts
B 13
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
dotted about, completely overhung by the most
enormous trees. ‘There was no sort of order:
they appeated anywhere: there were no railings,
and only one ot two of the most terribly starved,
mangy cattle to keep in or out. In the middle of
all was an indeterminate quagmire or muddy pond,
where a group of half-naked negroes, and totally
naked black children, and a few brown ones, were
splashing with geese and ducks.
Emily stated: they stared back. She made a
movement towards them: they separated at once
into the various huts, and watched her from there.
Encouraged by the comfortable feeling of inspir-
ing fright she advanced, and at last found an old
creature who would talk: Dis Liberty Hill, dis
Black Man’s Town, Old-time niggers, dey go fet
run ftom de bushas (overseers), go fer live here.
De piccaninnies, dey never see buckras (whites)...
And so on. It was a refuge, built by runaway
slaves, and still inhabited.
And then, that her cup of happiness might be
full, some of the bolder children crept out and re-
spectfully offered her flowers—really to geta better
look at her pallid face. Her heart bubbled up in
her, she swelled with glory : and taking leave with
the greatest condescension she ttod all the long
way home on veritable air, back to her beloved
family, back to a birthday cake wreathed with
14
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
stephanotis, lit with ten candles, and in which it so
happened that the sixpenny piece was invariably
found in the birthday-person’s slice,
iii
This was, fairly typically, the life of an English
family in Jamaica. Mostly these only stayed a few
yeats. The Creoles—families who had been in
the West Indies for more than one generation—
gtadually evolved something a little more distin@-
ive. They lost some of the ttaditional mental
mechanism of Europe, and the outlines of a new
one began to appeat.
There was one such family the Bas-Thorntons
were acquainted with, who had a ramshackle
estate to the eastwatd. They invited John and —
Emily to spend a couple of days with them,
but Mrs. Thotnton was in two minds about
letting them go, lest they should learn bad ways.
The children there were a wildish lot, and, in the
morning at least, would often run about barefoot
like negroes, which is a very important point in a
place like Jamaica where the whites have to keep
up appearances. They had a governess whose |
blood was possibly not pure, and who used to beat
the children ferociously with a hait-brush. How-
ever, the climate at the Fernandez’s place was
aD
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
healthy, and also Mrs. Thornton thought it good
for them to have some intercourse with other chil-
dren outside theit own family, however undesit-
able: and she let them go.
It was the afternoon after that birthday, and a
long buggy-tide. Both fat John and thin Emily
were speechless and solemn with excitement: it
was the first visit they had ever paid. Hour after
hour the buggy laboured over the uneven toad.
At last the lane to Exeter, the Fernandez’s place,
was teached. It was evening, the sun about to do
his rapid tropical setting. He was unusually large
and ted, as if he threatened something peculiar.
The lane, or drive, was gorgeous: for the first few
hundred yards it was entirely hedged with ‘ seaside
grapes,’ clusters of fruit half-way between a goose-
berry and a golden pippin, with here and there the
ted berries of coffee trees newly planted among the
burnt stumps in a clearing, but already neglected.
Then a massive stone gateway in a sort of Colonial-
Gothic style. ‘This had to be circumvented: no
one had taken the trouble to heave open the heavy
gates foryeats. ‘There was no fence, nor ever had
been, so the track simply passed it by.
And beyond the gates an avenue of magnificent
cabbage-palms. No tree, not oldest beech nor
chestnut, is more spectacular in an avenue: rising
a sheer hundred feet with no break in the line
16
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
before the atual crown of plumes; and palm upon
palm, palm upon palm, like a heavenly double
row of pillars, leading on interminably, till even
the huge house was dwarfed into a sort of ultimate
mouse-trap.
As they journeyed on between these palms the
sun went suddenly down, darkness flooded up
round them out of the ground, retorted to almost
immediately by the moon. Presently, shimmer-
ing like a ghost, an old blind white donkey stood in
their way. Curses did not move him : the driver
had to climb down and push him aside. The air
was full of the usual tropic din : mosquitoes hum-
ming, cicalas trilling, bull-frogs twanging like
guitars. That din goes on all night and all day
almost : is more insistent, more memorable than
the heat itself, even, or the number of things that
bite. In the valley beneath the fire-flies came to
life : as if at a signal passed along, wave after wave
after wave of light swept down the gorge. From
neat the house some tame cockatoos began their
serenade, an orchestration of drunk men laughing
against iron girders tossed at each other and sawn
up with rusty hack-saws: the most awful noise.
But Emily and John, so far as they noticed it at all,
found it vaguely exhilarating. Through it could
presently be distinguished another sound : a negro
ptaying. They soon came near him: where an
17
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
otange tree loaded with golden fruit gleamed dark ©
and bright in the moonlight, veiled in the pinpoint
scintillation of a thousand fire-flies sat the old
black saint among the branches, talking loudly,
drunkenly, and confidentially with God.
Almost unexpectedly they came on the house,
and were whisked straight off to bed. Emily
omitted to.wash, since there seemed such a hurty,
but made up for it by spending an unusually long
time over her prayers. She pressed her eyeballs
devoutly with her fingers to make sparks appear,
in spite of the slightly sick feeling it always in-
duced: and then, already sound asleep, clambered,
I suppose, into bed.
The next day the sun rose as he had set: large,
round, and red. It was blindingly hot, foreboding.
Emily, who woke early in a strange bed, stood at
the window watching the negroes release the hens
from the chicken-houses, where they were shut up
at night for fear of John-crows. As each bird
hopped sleepily out, the black passed his hand over
its Stomach to see if it meditated an ege that day :
if so, it was confined again, or it would have gone
off and laid in the bush. It was already as hot as
anoven. Another black, with eschatological yells
and tail-twistings and lassoings, was confining a
cow in a kind of pillory, that it might have no
opportunity of sitting down while being milked.
18
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
The poor brute’s hooves were aching with the
heat, its miserable tea-cup of milk fevered in its
udder. Even as she stood at the shady window
Emily felt as sweaty as if she had been running.
The ground was fissured with drought.
Margaret Fernandez, whose room Emily was
sharing, slipped out of bed silently and stood be-
side her, wrinkling the short nose in her pallid face.
“Good morning,’ said Emily politely.
* Smells like an earthquake,’ said Margaret, and
dressed. Emily remembered the awful story about
the governess and the hair-brush: certainly Mar-
garet did not use one for its ordinary purpose,
though she had long hair: so it must be true.
Margaret was teady long before Emily, and
banged out of the room. Emily followed later,
neat and nervous, to find no one. The house was
empty. Presently she spied John under a tree,
talking to a negro boy. By his off-hand manner
Emily guessed he was telling dsproportionate stories
(not es) about the importance of Ferndale com-
pared with Exeter. She did not call him, because
the house was silent and it was not her place, as
guest, to alter anything : so she went out to him.
Together they circumnavigated: they found a
Stable-yard, and negroes preparing ponies, and the
Fernandez children, barefoot even as Rumour had
whispered. Emily caught her breath, shocked.
”)
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Even at that moment a chicken, scuttling across
the yard, trod on a scorpion and tumbled over
Stark dead as if shot. But it was not so much the
danger which upset Emily as the unconvention-
ality.
‘Come on,’ said Margaret : ‘ it ’s much too hot
to Stay about here. Well go down to Exeter
Rocks.’
The cavalcade mounted—Emily very conscious
of her boots, buttoned respectably half-way up
her calf. Somebody had food, and calabashes of
water. The ponies evidently knew the way.
The sun was still red and large: the sky above
cloudless, and like blue glaze poured over baking
clay : but close over the ground a dirty grey haze
hovered. As they followed the lane towards the
sea they came to a place where, yesterday, a fair-
sized spting had bubbled up by the roadside.
Now it was dry. But even as they passed a kind
of gout of water gushed forth: and then it was
dty again, although gurgling inwardly to itself.
But the cavalcade were hot, far too hot to speak to
one another: they sat their ponies as loosely as
possible, longing for the sea,
The morning advanced. ‘The heated air grew
quite easily hotter, as if from some reserve of
enormous blaze on which it could draw at will.
Bullocks only shifted their stinging feet when they
20
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
could bear the soil no longer: even the insects
wete too languorous to pipe, the basking lizards
hid themselves and panted. It was so still you
could have heard the least buzz a mile off. Not
a naked fish would willingly move his tail. The
ponies advanced because they must. The children
ceased even to muse.
They all very nearly jumped out of their skins ;
for close at hand a ctane had trumpeted once des-
petately. Then the broken silence closed down
as flawless as before. They perspited twice as
violently with the stimulus. Their pace grew
slowet and slower. It was no faster than a pro-
cession of snails that at last they reached the sea.
Exeter Rocks is a famous place. A bay of the
sea, almost a petfe& semicircle, guarded by the
reef: shelving white sands to span the few feet
from the water to the under-cut turf: and then,
almost at the mid point, a jutting-out shelf of rocks
tight into deep water—fathoms deep. And a
nattow fissure in the rocks, leading the water into
a small pool, or miniature lagoon, right inside
their bastion. ‘There it was, safe from sharks or
drowning, that the Fernandez children meant to
soak themselves all day, like turtles in a crawl.
The water of the bay was as smooth and immov-
able as basalt, yet cleat as the finest gin: albeit
the swell muttered a mile away on the reef. The
21
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
water within the pool itself could not reasonably
be smoother. No sea-breeze thought of stirring.
No bird trespassed on the inert air.
For a while they had not energy to get into the
water, but lay on their faces, looking down, down,
down, at the sea-fans and sea-feathers, the scarlet-
plumed barnacles and corals, the black and yellow
schoolmistress-fish, the rainbow-fish—all that for-
est of ideal christmas trees which is a tropical sea-
‘bottom, Then they stood up, giddy and seeing
black, and in a trice were floating suspended in
water like drowned ones, only their noses above
the surface, under the shadow of a rocky ledge.
An hour or so after noon they clustered to-
gether, puffy from the warm water, in the in-
sufficient shade of a Panama fern: ate such of the
food they had brought as they had appetite for ;
and drank all the water, wishing for more. Then
a very odd thing happened: for even as they sat
there they heard the most peculiar sound: a
Strange, rushing sound that passed overhead like a
gale of wind—but not a breath of breeze stirred,
that was the odd thing: followed by a sharp
hissing and hurtling, like a flight of rockets, or
gigantic swans—very distant rocs, perhaps—on the
wing. They all looked up: but there was nothing
at all. The sky was empty and lucid. Long
before they were back in the water again all was
a2
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
sill, Except that after a while John noticed a sort
of tapping, as if some one were gently knocking
the outside of a bath you were in. But the bath
they were in had no outside, it was solid world.
It was funny.
..By sunset they were so weak from long immet-
sion they could barely stand up, and as salted as
bacon: but, with some common impulse, just be-
fore the sun went down they all left the rocks and
went and stood by their clothes, where the ponies
were tethered, under some palms. As he sank
the sun grew even larger: and instead of red was
now asodden purple. Down he went, behind the
western horn of the bay, which blackened till its
watet-line disappeated and substance and teflec-
tion seemed one sharp symmetrical pattern.
Nota breath of breeze even yet ruffled the water:
yet momentarily it trembled of its own accord,
shattering the reflections : then was glassy again.
On that the children held their breath, waiting for
it to happen.
A school of fish, terrified by some purely sub-
marine event, thrust their heads right out of the
water, squattering across the bay in an arrowy
tush, dashing up sparkling ripples with the tiny
heave of their shoulders: yet after each distutb-
ance all was soon like hardest, dark, thick glass.
Once things vibrated slightly, like a chair in a
23
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
concert-toom: and again there was that mysteri-
ous winging, though there was nothing visible
beneath the swollen iridescent stars.
Then it came. The water of the bay began to
ebb away, as if some one had pulled up the plug: a
foot ot so of sand and coral gleamed for a moment
new to the air: then back the sea rushed in minia-
ture rollers which splashed right up to the feet of
the palms. Mouthfuls of turf were torn away:
and on the far side of the bay a small piece of cliff
tumbled into the water: sand and twigs showered
down, dew fell from the trees like diamonds: bitds
and beasts, their tongues at last loosed, screamed
and bellowed: the ponies, though quite un-
alarmed, lifted up their heads and yelled.
That was all: a few moments. ‘Then silence,
with a rapid countermarch, recovered all his
tebellious kingdom, Stillness again. The trees
moved as little as the pillars of a ruin, each leaf laid
sleekly in place. The bubbling foam subsided :
the reflections of the stars came out among it as if
from clouds. Silent, still, dark, placid, as if there
could never have been a disturbance. ‘The naked
children too continued to stand motionless beside
the quiet ponies, dew on their hair and eyelashes,
shine on their infantile round paunches.
But as for Emily, it was too much. The earth-
quake went completely to her head. She began
24
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
to dance, hopping laboriously from one foot on to
another. John caught the infection. He turned
head over heels on the damp sand, over and over
in an elliptical course, till before he knew it he was
in the water, and so giddy as hardly to be able to
tell up from down.
At that, Emily knew what it was she wanted to
do. She scrambled on to a pony and galloped
him up and down the beach, trying to bark like’a
dog. ‘The Fernandez children stared, solemn but
not disapproving. John, shaping a course for
Cuba, was swimming as if sharks were paring his
toe-nails. Emily rode her pony into the sea, and
beat and beat him till he swam: and so she
followed John towards the reef, yapping herself
hoatse.
It must have been fully a hundred yards before
they were spent. Then they turned for the shore,
John holding on to Emily’s leg, puffing and gasp-
ing, both a little overdone, their emotion run
down. Presently John gasped :
‘You shouldn’t ride on your bateskin, you ’Il
catch ringworm.’
‘I don’t care if I do,’ said Emily.
‘You would if you did,’ said John.
“I don’t cate!’ chanted Emily. |
It seemed a long way to the shore. When they
reached it the others had dressed and were prepat-
25
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
ing to start. Soon the whole party were on their
way home in the dark. Presently Margaret said :
“So that ’s that.’
No one answered.
“I could smell it was an earthquake coming
when I got up. Didn’t I say so, Emily ?’
‘You and your smells!’ said Jimmie Fernan-
dez. ‘You’re always smelling things ! ’
‘ She ’s awfully good at smells,’ said the young-
est, Harry, proudly, to John. ‘ She can sort out
people’s dirty clothes for the wash by smell : who
they belong to.’
“She can’t really,’ said Jimmie: ‘she fakes it.
As if every one smelt different ! ’
rabpeath!
* Dogs can, anyway,’ said John.
Emily said nothing. Of course people smelt
different: it didn’t need arguing. She could
always tell her own towel from John’s, for in-
Stance : of even knew if one of the others had used
it. But it just showed what sort of people Creoles
were, to /a/k about Smell, in that open way.
‘Well, anyhow I said there was going to be an
earthquake and there was one,’ said Margaret.
That was what Emily was waiting for! So it
really had been an Earthquake (she had not liked
to ask, it seemed so ignorant : but now Margaret
had said in so many words that it was one),
26
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
If ever she went back to England, she could
now say to people, ‘ I have been in an Earthquake,
With that certainty, her soused excitement began
to tevive. For there was nothing, no adventure
from the hands of God or Man, to equal it.
Realise that if she had suddenly found she could
fly it would not have seemed more miraculous to
her. Heaven had played its last, most terrible
catd; and small Emily had survived, where even
grown men (such as Korah, Dathan, and Abiram)
had succumbed.
- Life seemed suddenly a little empty : for never
again could there happen to her anything so
dangerous, so sublime.
Meanwhile, Margaret and Jimmie were Still
arguing :
‘Well, there ’s one thing, thete ’ll be plenty of
eges to-morrow,’ said Jimmie. ‘There’s nothing
like an earthquake for making them lay.’
How funny Creoles were! They didn’t seem
to realise the difference it made to a person’s ‘vhole
after-life to have been in an Earthquake.
When they got home, Martha, the black house-
maid, had hard things to say about the sublime
cataclysm. She had dusted the drawing-toom
china only the day before: and now everything
‘was covered again in a fine penetrating film of
dust.
27
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
iv
The next morning, Sunday, they went home.
Emily was still so saturated in earthquake as to be
dumb. She ate earthquake and slept earthquake :
her fingers and legs were earthquake. With John
it was ponies. ‘The earthquake had been fun : but
it was the ponies that mattered. But at present it
did not worry Emily that she was alone in her
sense of proportion. She was too completely
possessed to be able to see anything, or realise that
any one else pretended to even a self-delusive
fiction of existence.
Their mother met them at the door. She
bubbled questions: John chattered ponies, but
Emily was still tongue-tied. She was, in her mind,
like a child who has eaten too much even to be
able to be sick.
Mrs. Thornton got a little worried about her at
times. ‘This sort of life was very peaceful, and
might be excellent for nervy children like John :
but a child like Emily, thought Mrs. Thornton,
who is far from nervy, really needs some sort of
Stimulus and excitement, or there is a danger of her
mind going to sleep altogether for ever. ‘This life
was too vegetable. Consequently Mrs. Thornton
always spoke to Emily in her brightest manner, as
if everything was of the greatest possible interest.
28
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
She had hoped, too, the visit to Exeter might liven
her up: but she had come back as silent and ex-
' ptessionless as ever. It had evidently made no
imptession on her at all.
John marshalled the small ones in the cellar, and
round and round they marched, wooden swords
at the slope, singing ‘ Onward, Christian Soldiers.’
Emily did not join them. What did it now matter,
that earlier woe, that being a girl she could never
when gtown up become a teal soldier with a real
swotd? She had been in an Earthquake.
Nor did the others keep it up very long. (Some-
times they would go on for three or four houts.)
For, whatever it might have done for Emily’s soul,
the earthquake had done little to clear the air. It
was as hot as ever. In the animal world there
‘seemed some strange commotion, as if they had
wind of something. ‘The usual lizards and mos-
quitoes were still absent: but in their place the
eatth’s most horrid progeny, creatures of darkness,
sought the open : land-crabs wandered about aim-
lessly, angrily twiddling their claws: and the
gtound seemed almost alive with red ants and
cockroaches. Up on the roof the pigeons were
gathered, talking to each other fearfully.
The cellar (or rather, ground floor), where they
were playing, had no communication with the
wooden structure above, but had an opening of
Cc 29
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
its own under the twin flight of steps leading to
the front door; and there the children presently
gathered in the shadow. Out in the compound
lay one of Mr. Thornton’s best handkerchiefs. He
must have dropped it that morning. But none of
them felt the energy to go and retrieve it, out into
the sun. Then, as they stood there, they saw
Lame-foot Sam come limping across the yard.
Seeing the prize, he was about to carry it off.
Suddenly he remembered it was Sunday. He
dropped it like a hot brick, and began to cover it
with sand, exaétly where he had found it.
‘Please God, I thieve you to-mortow,’ he ex-
plained hopefully. ‘ Please God, you still there ?°
A low mutter of thunder seemed to offer grudg-
ing assent.
‘Thank you, Lord,’ said Sam, bowing to a low
bank of cloud. He hobbled off: but then, not too
sute perhaps that Heaven would keep Its promise,
changed his mind: snatched up the handkerchief
and made off for his cottage. ‘The thunder mut-
tered louder and more angrily : but Sam ignored
the warning.
It was the custom that, whenever Mr. Thornton
had been to St. Anne’s, John and Emily should
run out to meet him, and ride back with him, one
perched on each of his stitrups.
That Sunday evening they tan out as soon as
30
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
they saw him coming, in spite of the thunderstorm
that by now was clattering over their very heads—
and not only over their heads either, for in the
Tropics a thunderstorm is not a remote affair up in
the sky, as it is in England, but is all round you :
lightning plays ducks and drakes across the water,
bounds from tree to tree, bounces about the
ground, while the thunder seems to proceed from
violent explosions in your own very cote.
“Go back! Go back, you damned little fools !”
he yelled furiously : ‘ Get into the house ! ’
They stopped, aghast: and began to realise that
after all it was a Storm of more than ordinary vio-
lence. ‘They discovered that they were drenched
to the skin—must have been the moment they left
the house. The lightning kept up a continuous
blaze: it was playing about their father’s very
_ Stitrup-irons ; and all of a sudden they realised that
he was afraid. They fled to the house, shocked to
the heart : and he was in the house almost as soon
as they wete. Mrs. Thornton rushed out :
“My deat, I’mso glad...’
“I’ve never seen such a Storm! Why on earth
did you let the children come out ?’
‘I never dreamt they would be so silly! And
all the time I was thinking—but thank Heaven
you *re back !’
‘1 think the worst is over now.’
31
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Perhaps it was; but all through supper the
lightning shone almost without flickering. And
John and Emily could hardly eat : the memory of
that momentary look on their father’s face haunted
them.
It was an unpleasant meal altogether. Mrs.
Thornton had prepared for her husband his ‘ fav-
ourite dish’: than which no action could more
annoy a man of whim. In the middle of it all in
burst Sam, ceremony dropped : he flung the hand-
kerchief angrily on the table and stumped out.
‘What on earth .. .”? began Mr. Thornton.
But John and Emily knew: and thoroughly
agteed with Sam as to the cause of the storm.
Stealing was bad enough anyway, but on a
Sunday !
Meanwhile, the lightning kept up its play. The
thunder made talking arduous, but no one was
anyhow in a mood to chatter. Only thunder
was heard, and the hammering of the rain. But
suddenly, close under the window, there burst
out the most appalling inhuman shriek of terror.
‘Tabby!’ cried John, and they all rushed to
the window.
But Tabby had already flashed into the house :
and behind him was a whole club of wild cats
in hot pursuit. John momentarily opened the
dining-room door and puss slipped in, dishevelled
32
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
and panting. Not even then did the brutes desist:
what insane futy led these jungle creatures to
pursue him into the very house is unimaginable ;
but there they were, in the passage, caterwauling
in concett: and as if at their incantation the
thunder awoke anew, and the lightning nulli-
fied the meagre table lamp. It was such a din
as you could not speak through. ‘Tabby, his fur
on end, pranced up and down the room, his eyes
blazing, talking and sometimes exclaiming in a
tone of voice the children had never heard him
use before and which made their blood run cold.
He seemed like one inspired in the presence of
Death, he had gone utterly Delphic: and with-
out in the passage Hell’s pandemonium reigned
terrifically.
The check could only be a short one. Outside
the door stood the big filter, and above the door the
fanlight was long since broken. Something black
and yelling flashed through the fanlight, landing
clean in the middle of the supper table, scattering
the forks and spoons and upsetting the lamp. And
another and another—but already Tabby was
through the window and streaking again for the
bush, The whole dozen of those wild cats leapt
one after the other from the top of the filter clean
through the fanlight onto the supper table, and
away from there only too hot in his tracks: in
33
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
a moment the whole devil-hunt and its hopeless
quatry had vanished into the night.
‘Oh Tabby, my darling Tabby!’ wailed John;
while Emily rushed again to the window.
They were gone. The lightning behind the
creepers in the jungle lit them up like giant cob-
webs: but of Tabby and his pursuers there was
nothing to be seen.
John burst into tears, the first time for several
years, and flung himself on his mother: Emily
Stood transfixed at the window, her eyes glued in
horrot on what she could not, in fa@, see: and all
of a sudden was sick.
‘God, what an evening!’ groaned Mr. Bas-
Thornton, groping in the darkness for what might
be left of their supper.
Shortly after that Sam’s hut burst into flames.
They saw, from the dining-room, the old negro
Stagger dramatically out into the darkness. He
was throwing stones at the sky. In a lull they
heard him cry : ‘I gib it back, didn’t 1? I gib de
nasty ting back P’
Then there was another blinding flash, and Sam
fell where he stood. Mr. Thornton pulled the
children roughly back and said something like
‘Ill go and see. Keep them from the window.’
Then he closed and barred «he shutters, and
was gone.
34
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
John and the little ones kept up a continuous
sobbing. Emily wished some one would light a
lamp, she wanted to read. Anything, so as not to
think about poor Tabby.
I suppose the wind must have begun to rise
some while before this, but now, by the time Mr.
Thornton had managed to carry old Sam’s body
into the house, it was more than a gale. The old
man, stiff in the joints as he might have been in
life, had gone as limp as a worm. Emily and
John, who had slipped unbeknownst into the
passage, were thrilled beyond measure at the way
he dangled: they could hardly tear themselves
away, and be back in the dining-room, before they
should be discovered.
There Mts. Thornton sat heroically in a chair,
her brood all grouped round her, saying the
Psalms, and the poems of Sir Walter Scott, over
by heatt : while Emily tried to keep her mind off
Tabby by going over in her head all the details of
her Earthquake. At times the din, the rocketing
of the thunder and torrential shriek of the wind,
became so loud as almost to impinge on her inner
world: she wished this wretched thunderstorm
would hurty up and get over. First she held an
actual performance of the earthquake, went over
it diredt, as if it was again happening. Then she
put it into Oratio Retta, told it as a story, begin-
35
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
ning with that magic phrase, ‘Once I was in an
Earthquake.’ But before long the dramatic ele-
ment reappeared—this time, the awed comments
of her imaginary English audience. When that
was done, she put it into the Historical—a Voice,
declaring that a gitl called Emily was once in an
Earthquake. And so on, tight through the whole
thing a third time.
The horrid fate of poot Tabby appeared sud-
denly before her eyes, caught her unawares: and
she was all but sick again. Even her earthquake
had failed her. Caught by the incubus, her mind
struggled frantically to clutch at even the outside
world, as an only remaining straw. She tried to
fix her interest on every least detail of the scene
atound her—to count the slats in the shutters, any
least detail that was outward. So it was that for the
first time she really began to notice the weather.
The wind by now was mote than redoubled.
The shutters were bulging as if tired elephants
were leaning against them, and Father was trying
to tie the fastening with that handkerchief. But
to push against this wind was like pushing against
rock. ‘The handkerchief, shutters, everything
burst : the rain poured in like the sea into a sink-
ing ship, the wind occupied the room, snatching
piaures from the wall, sweeping the table bare.
Through the gaping frames the lightning-lit scene
36
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
without was visible. The creepers, which before
had looked like cobwebs, now streamed up into
the sky like new-combed hair. Bushes were lying
flat, laid back on the ground as close as a rabbit
lays back his ears. Branches were leaping about
loose in the sky. The negro huts were clean gone,
and the negtoes ctawling on their stomachs actoss
the compound to gain the shelter of the house.
The bouncing rain seemed to cover the ground
with a white smoke, a sort of sea in which the
blacks wallowed like porpoises. One nigget-boy
began to roll away: hismother, forgetting caution,
rose to her feet : and immediately the fat old bel-
dam was blown clean away, bowling along across
fields and hedgerows like some one in a funny
fairy-Sstory, till she fetched up against a wall and
was pinned there, unable to move. But the others
- managed to teach the house, and soon could be
heard in the cellar underneath.
Moreover the very floor began to ripple, as a
loose carpet will ripple on a gusty day : in opening
the cellar door the blacks had let the wind in, and
now for some time they could not shut it again.
The wind, to push against, was more like a solid
block than a current of air.
Mr. Thornton went round the house—to see
what could be done, he said. He soon tealised
_ that the next thing to go would be the roof. So
37
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
he returned to the Niobe-group in the dining-
room. Mrs. Thornton was half-way through The
Lady of the Lake, the smaller children listening
with rapt attention. Exasperated, he told them -
that they would probably not be alive in half an
hour. No one seemed particularly interested in
his news: Mrs. Thornton continued her recita-
tion with faultless memory.
After another couple of cantos the threatened
roof went. Fortunately, the wind taking it from
inside, most of it was blown clear of the house:
but one of the couples collapsed skew-eyed, and
was hung up on what was left of the dining-room
door—within an ace of hitting John. Emily, to
her intense resentment, suddenly felt cold. All at
once, she found she had had enough of the storm :
it had become intolerable, instead of a welcome
distraction.
Mr. Thornton began to look for something to
break through the floor. If only he could make a
hole in it, he might get his wife and children down
into the cellar. Fortunately hedid not have to look
far: one arm of the fallen couple had already done
the work for him, Laura, Rachel, Emily, Edward
and John, Mrs. Thornton and finally Mr. Thorn-
ton himself, were passed down into the darkness
already thronged with negroes and goats.
With great good sense, Mr. Thornton brought
38
A HIGH WIND IN. JAMAICA
with him from the room above a couple of de-
canters of madeira, and every one had a swig, from
Laura to the oldest negro. All the children made
the most of this unholy chance, but somehow to
Emily the bottle got passed twice, and each time
she took a good pull. It was enough, at their age;
and while what was left of the house was blown
away over their heads, through the lull and the
ensuing aerial return match, John, Emily, Edward,
Rachel, and Laura, blind drunk, slept in a heap on
the cellar oor: a sleep over which the appalling
fate of Tabby, torn to pieces by those fiends almost
under their very eyes, dominated with the easy
empire of nightmare.
39
Chapter 2
ALL night the water poured through the
| A house floor onto the people sheltering be-
low: but (perhaps owing to the madeira)
it did them no harm. Shortly after the second
bout of blowing, however, the rain stopped ; and
when dawn came Mr. Thornton crept out to assess
the damage.
The country was quite unrecognisable, as if it
had been swept by a spate. You could hardly tell,
geographically speaking, where you were. It is
vegetation which gives the character to a tropic
landscape, not the shape of the ground: and all
the vegetation, for miles, was now pulp. The
ground itself had been ploughed up by instan-
taneous rivers, biting deep into the red earth. The
only living thing in sight was a cow: and she had
lost both her horns,
Thewooden part of the house was nearlyall gone,
After they had succeeded in reaching shelter, one
wall after another had blown down. The furni-
ture was splintered into matchwood. Even the
heavy mahogany dining-table, which they loved,
and had always kept with its legs in little glass
baths of oil to defeat the ants, was spirited right
40
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
away. There were some fragments which might
be part of it, or they might not: you could not
tell. :
Mr. Thornton returned to the cellar and helped
his wife out : she was so cramped as hardly to be
able to move. They knelt down together and
thanked God for not having treated them any
worse. Then they stood up and stared about
them rather stupidly. It seemed not credible that
all this had been done by a current of air. Mr.
Thornton patted the atmosphere with his hand.
When still, it was so soft, so rate: how could one
believe that Motion, itself something impalpable,
had lent it a hardness: that this gentle, hind-like
Meteor should have last night seized Fat Betsy
with the rapacity of a tiger and the lift of a roc, and
flung her, as he had seen her flung, across two fait-
sized fields ?
Mts. Thotnton understood his gesture.
‘Remember who is its Prince,’ she said.
The stable was damaged, though not completely
destroyed: and Mr. Thornton’s mule was so much
hurt he had to tell a negro to cut its throat. The
buggy was smashed beyond repair. The only
building undamaged was a stone chamber which
had been the hospital of the old sugar-estate : so
they woke the children, who were feeling ill and
beyond words unhappy, and moved into this:
41
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
whete the negroes, with an unexpected energy and
kindliness, did everything they could to make
them comfortable. It was paved and unlighted :
but solid.
The children were bilious for a few days, and
inclined to dislike each other: but they accepted
the change in their lives practically without notic-
ing it. It is a fact that it takes experience before
one can realise what is a catastrophe and what is
not. Children have little faculty of distinguishing
between disaster and the ordinary course of their
lives. If Emily had known this was a Hurricane,
she woulddoubtless have been far more impressed,
for the word was full of romantic terrors. But it
never entered her head: and a thunderstorm,
however sevete, is after all a commonplace affair.
The mete fact that it had done incalculable damage,
while the earthquake had done none at all, gave it
no right whatever to rival the latter in the hier-
atchy of cataclysms: an Earthquake is a thing
apart. If she was silent, and inclined to brood
overt some inward terror, it was not the hurricane
she was thinking of, it was the death of Tabby.
That, at times, seemed a horror beyond all bearing.
It was her first intimate contact with death—and a
death of violence, too. ‘The death of Old Sam
had no such effect: there is, after all, a vast differ-
ence between a negro and a favourite cat.
42
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
There was something enjoyable, too, in camp-
ing in the hospital: a sort of everlasting picnic in
which their parents for once were taking part.
Indeed it led them to begin for the first time to
regatd their parents as rational human beings,
with understandable tastes—such as sitting on the
floor to eat one’s dinner.
It would have surptised Mrs. Thornton very
much to have been told that hitherto she had
meant practically nothing to her children. She
took a keen interest in Psychology (the Art Bab-
blative, Southey calls it). She was full of theories
about their upbringing which she had not time to
put into effect; but nevertheless she thought she
had a deep understanding of their temperaments
and was the centre of their passionate devotion.
Adtually, she was congenitally incapable of telling
one end of a child from the other. She was a
dumpy little woman—Cornish, I believe. When
she was herself a baby she was so small they carried
her about on a cushion for fear a clumsy human
atm might damage her. She could read when she
was two and a half. Her reading was always
serious. Nor had she been backward in the
humaner studies: her mistresses spoke of her
Depottment as something rarely seen outside the
older Royal Houses: in spite of a figure like a
bolster, she could step into a coach like an angel
F
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
getting onto a cloud. She was very quick-
tempered.
Mr. Bas-Thornton also had every accomplish-
ment, except two: that of primogeniture, and
that of making a living. Hither would have pro-
vided for them.
If it would have surprised the mother, it would
undoubtedly have surprised the children also to
be told how little their parents meant to them.
Children seldom have any power of quantitative
self-analysis : whatever the facts, they believe as
an atticle of faith that they love Father and Mother
first and equally. A€tually, the Thornton children
had loved Tabby first and foremost in all the world,
some of each other second, and hardly noticed
their mother’s existence mote than once a week.
Their father they loved a little more: partly owing
to the ceremony of riding home on his stirrups.
Jamaica remained, and blossomed anew, its
womb being inexhaustible. Mr. and Mts. Thorn-
ton remained, and with patience and tears tried to
reconstrué things, in so far as they could be re-
constructed. But the danger which their beloved
little ones had been through was not a thing to
tisk again. Heaven had watned them. ‘The chil-
dren must go.
Nor was the only danger physical.
‘ That awful night !” said Mrs. Thornton, once,
44
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
when discussing their plan of sending them home
to school: ‘Oh my dear, what the poor little
things must have suffered! Think how much
more acute Fear is toa child! And they were so
brave, so English.’
“I don’t believe they realised it.” (He only said
that to be contradictious : he could hardly expect
it to be taken seriously.)
‘You know, [am terribly afraid what perman-
ent, zuward effect a shock like that may have on
them. Have you noticed they never so much as
mention it? In England they would at least be
safe from dangers of that sort.’
Meanwhile the children, accepting the new life
as a matter of course, were thoroughly enjoying
it. Most children, ona railway journey, prefer
to change at as many stations as possible.
The rebuilding of Ferndale, too, was a matter of
absorbing interest. For there is one advantage to
these match-box houses—easy gone, easy come:
and once begun, the work proceeded apace. Mr.
Thornton himself led the building gang, employ-
ing no end of mechanical devices of his own de-
vising, and it was not long before the day came
when he stood with his handsome head emerging
through the fast dwindling hole in the new roof,
shouting diretions to the two black carpenters,
who, lying spread-eagle in their check shitts,
D 45
7
¥
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
pinned on shingle after shingle—walling him in,
like the vi€tim in some horrid story. At last he
had to draw in his head, and where it had been the
last few shingles were clapped into place.
An hour later the children had looked their last
on Ferndale.
When they had been told they were to go to
England, they had received it as an isolated fact :
thrilling in itself, but without any particular causa-
tion—for it could hardly be due to the death of the
cat, and nothing else of importance had occurred
lately.
The first stage of their journey was by land, to
Montego Bay, and the notable thing about it was
that the borrowed wagonette was drawn not by a
pair of horses or a pair of mules, but by one horse
and one mule. Whenever the horse wanted to go
fast the mule fell asleep in the shafts: and if the
driver woke it up it set off at a gallop, which
angered the horse. Their progress would have
been slow anyhow, as all the roads were washed
away.
John was the only one who could remember
England. What he remembered was sitting at
the top of a flight of Stairs, which was fenced off
from him by a little gate, playing with a red toy
milk-cart : and he knew, without having to look,
that in the room on the left Baby Emily was lying
46
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
inher cot. Emily said she could remember some-
thing which sounded like a Prospeé of the Backs
of some Brick Houses at Richmond: but she
might have invented it. The others had been
born in the Island—Edward only just.
They all had, nevertheless, most elaborate ideas
about England, built up out of what their parents
had told them, and from the books and old maga-
zines they sometimes looked at. Needless to
say it was a vety Atlantis, a land at the back of
the North Wind: and going there was about
aS exciting as it would be to die and go to
Heaven.
John told them all about the top of the stairs for
the hundredth time as they drove along; the
others listening attentively (as the Believing do to
a man remembering his reincarnations).
Suddenly Emily recalled sitting at a window
and seeing a big bird with a beautiful tail. At the
same time there had been a horrid screeching
going on, ot perhaps something else disagreeable
—she could not quite remember which sense was
offended. It did not occur to her that it was this
self-same bitd which had screeched : and anyhow
it was all too vague for her to try to describe it.
She switched off to wondering how it was possible
actually to sleep when walking, as the driver said
the mule did.
47
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
They put up for the first night at St. Anne’s, and
there another notable thing occurred. ‘Their host
was a hardened Creole: and at supper he ate Cay-
enne pepper withaspoon. Not ordinary Cayenne
pepper, mind, such as is sold in shops, which is
heavily adulterated with log-wood: but the far
fierier pute original. This indeed was an Event
of the first water : none of them ever forgot it.
The desolation through which they drove is in-
describable. Tropical scenery is anyhow tedious,
prolific, and gross: the greens more or less uni-
form: great tubular stems supporting thick leaves:
no tree has an outline because it is crushed up
against something else—no room. In Jamaica this
profusion swarms over the very mountain ranges :
and even the peaks are so numerous that on the
top of one you are surrounded by others, and can
see nothing. There are hundreds of flowers.
Then imagine all this luxuriance smashed, as with
a pestle and mortar—crushed, pulped, and already
growing again! Mr. Thornton and his wife were
ready to shout with relief when they caught their
first elimpse of the sea, and at last came out in view
of the whole beautiful sweep of Montego Bay
itself.
In the open sea there was a considerable swell :
but within the shelter of the coral reef, with its
pinhole entrance, all was still as a mirror, where
48
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
three ships of different sizes lay at anchor, the
whole of each beautiful machine repeated in the
water under it. Within the Roads lay the Bogue
Islands ; and immediately to the left of the islands,
in the low land at the base of the hills, was the
mouth of a small river—swampy, and (Mr. Thorn-
ton informed John) infested with crocodiles. The
children had never seen a crocodile, and hoped
one might venture as far as the town, where they
ptesently arrived: but none did. It was with
considerable disappointment that they found they
were to go on board the barque at once ; for they
still hoped that round some corner of the street a
crocodile might yet appear.
The Clorinda had let go her anchor in six
fathoms: the water so clear, and the light so
bright, that as they drew near the refleCtion sud-
_ denly disappeared, and instead they found them-
selves looking right underneath her and out the
other side. The refraction made her seem as
flat-bellied as a turtle, as if practically all of her
wete above the surface: and the anchor on its
cable seemed to stream out flatly, like a downwards
kite, twisting and twining (owing to the undulat-
ing surface) in the writhing coral.
This was the only impression Emily retained of
going on board the ship: but the ship itself was a
Strange enough object, requiring all her attention.
49
—
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
John was the only one who could remember the
journey out at all clearly. Emily thought she
could, but was really only remembering her visual-
isations of what she had been told: in faé, she
found that a teal ship was totally unlike the thing
she thought she remembered.
By some last whim of the captain’s the shrouds
were being set up—tauter than seemed good to the
sailors, who grumbled as they strained the creak-
ing lanyards. John did not envy them, winding
away at that handle in the hot sun: but he did
envy the chap whose job it was to dip his hand in
a gteat pot of aromatic Stockholm tar, and work
it into the dead-eyes. He was tarred up to the
elbows: and John itched to be so too.
In a moment the children were scattered all over
the ship, smelling here, miaowing, sniffing there,
like cats ina new home. Mr. and Mrs. Thornton
Stood by the main companion-way, a little dis-
consolate at their children’s happy preoccupation,
a little regretting the lack of proper emotional
scene.
‘1 think they will be happy here, Frederic,’ said
Mrs. Thornton. ‘I wish we could have afforded ©
to send them by the steam-boat : but children find
amusement even in discomfort.’
Mr. Thornton grunted.
‘I wish schools had never been invented!” he
50
etd
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
suddenly burst out: ‘they wouldn’t then be so
indispensable ! ’
There was a short pause for the logic of this to
ctoss the footlights : then he went on:
‘I know what will happen; they ll come away
... mugs\| Just ordinary little mugs, like any one
else’s brats! I’m dashed if I don’t think a hun-
dred hurricanes would be better than that.’
Mts. Thornton shuddered: but she continued
bravely :
“You know, I think they were getting almost
too devoted to us? We have been such an un-
' tivalled centre of their lives and thoughts. It
doesn’t do for minds developing to be completely
dependent on one person.’
Captain Marpole’s grizzled head emerged from
the scuttle. A sea-dog: clear blue eyes of a
translucent trustworthiness: a merty, wrinkled,
morocco-coloured face: a rumbling voice.
“He’s too good to be true,’ whispered Mrs.
Thornton.
‘Not atall! It’s a sophism to imagine people
don’t conform to type!’ barked Mr. Thornton.
He felt at sixes and sevens.
Captain Marpole certainly looked the ideal Chil-
dren’s Captain. He would, Mrs. Thornton de-
cided, be careful without being fussy—for she was
all in favour of courageous gymnastics, though
ae. re
y
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
glad she would not have to witness them herself.
Captain Marpole cast his eyes benignantly over the
swatming imps. |
‘ They ’ll worship him,’ she whispered to her
husband. (She meant, of course, that he would
worship them.) It was an important point, this,
of the captain: important as the personality of a
headmaster.
‘So that ’s the nursery, eh ?’ said the captain,
ctushing Mrs. Thornton’s hand. She strove to
answer, but found her throat undoubtedly para-
lysed. Even Mr. Thornton’s ready tongue was
at a loss. He looked hard at the captain, jerked
his. thumb towards the children, wrestled in his
mind with an elaborate speech, and finally enunci-
ated in a small, unlikely voice :
“Smack em.’
Then the captain had to go about his duties :
and for an hour the father and mother sat discon-
solately on the main hatch, quite deserted. Even
when all was ready for departure it was impossible
to muster the flock for a colletive good-bye.
Already the tug was fulminating in its gorge:
and ashore they must go. Emily and John
had been captured, and stood talking uneasily to
their parents, as if to Strangers, using only a
quarter of their minds. With a rope to be climbed
dangling before his very nose, John simply did not
52
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
know how this delay was to be supported, and
lapsed into complete silence.
“Time to go ashore, Ma’am,’ said the captain :
“we must be off now.’
Very formally the two generations kissed each
other, and said farewell. Indeed the eldets were
already at the gangway before the meaning of it all
dawned in Emily’s head. She rushed after her
mother, gripped her ample flesh in two strong
fists, and sobbed and wept, ‘ Come too, Mother,
oh, do come too!’
Honestly, it had only occurred to her that very
moment that this was a parting.
‘But think what an adventure it will be,’ said
Mts. Thornton bravely: ‘much more than if I
come too !—You ’Il have to look after the Liddlies
just as if you were a real grown-up ! ’
“But I don’t want any mote adventures!’
sobbed Emily: ‘I’ve got an Earthquake \’
Passions were running far too high for any one
to be awate how the final separation took place.
The next thing Mrs. Thornton could remember
was how tited her arm had been, after waving and
waving at that dwindling speck which bore away @
on the land breeze, hung awhile stationary in the
intervening calm, then won the Trade and climbed
up into the blue.
Meanwhile, at the rail Stood Margaret Fernan-
53
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
dez, who, with her little brother Harry, was going
to England by the same boat. No one had come
to see them off: and the brown nurse who was
accompanying them had gone below the moment
she came on board, so as to be ill as quickly as
possible. How handsome Mr. Bas-Thornton had
looked, with his English distin@tion! Yet every
one knew he had no money. Her set white face
was turned towards the land, her chin quivering
at intervals. Slowly the harbour disappeared: the
disordered profligacy of the turbulent, intricate
mass of hills sunk lower in the sky. The occa-
sional white houses, and white puffs of steam and
smoke from the sugat-mills, vanished. At last the
land, all palely shimmering like the bloom on
grapes, settled down into the mirror of emerald
and blue.
She wondered whether the Thornton children
would prove companionable, or a nuisance. They
were all younger than she was : which was a pity.
il
On the journey back to Ferndale both father
and mother were silent, a€tuated by that tug of
jealousy against sympathy which a strong common
emotion begets in familiar rather than passionate
54
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
companions. ‘They were above the ordinary sen-
timentalities of grass-bereavement (above choking
over small shoes found in cupboards): but not
above a rather strong dose of the natural instincts
of parenthood, Frederic no less than his wife.
But when they were nearly home, Mrs. Thorn-
ton began to chuckle to herself.
‘Funny little thing, Emily! Did you notice
almost the last thing she said? She said “I’ve
got an eatthquake.” She must have got it mixed
up in her silly old head with earache.’
There was along pause : and then she remarked
again :
‘John is so much the most sensitive: he was
absolutely too full to speak.’
iil
When they got home it was many days before
they could bring themselves openly to mention
the children. When some reference had to be
made, they spoke round them, in an uncomfott-
able way, as if they had died.
But after a few weeks they had a most welcome
surprise. The Clorinda was calling at the Caymans,
and taking the Leeward Passage: and while rid-
ing off the Grand Cayman Emily and John wrote
55
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
letters, and a vessel bound for Kingston had taken
charge of them and eventually they reached Fern-
dale. It had not even occurred to either parent
that this would be possible.
This was Emily’s :
My prEAR Parents,—This ship is full of Turtles.
We stopped here and they came out in boats. There
is turtles in the saloon under the tables for you to put
your feet on, and turtles in the passages and on the
deck, and everywhere you go. The captain says we
mustn’t fall overboard now because his boats are full
of turtles too, with water. The sailors bring the
others on deck every day to have a wash and when
you stand them up they look just as if they had pina-
fores on. They make such a funny sighing and
groaning in the night, at first I thought it was every-
body being ill, but you get used to it, it is just like
people being ill—Your loving daughter,
EmILy.
And John’s :
My veArEst PARENTS,—The captain’s son Henry
is a wonderful chap, he goes up the rigging with his
hands alone, he is ever so strong. He can turn
round under a bellying pin without touching the
deck, I can’t but I hang from the ratlines by my heels
which the sailors say is very brave, but they don’t
like Emily doing it, funny. I hope you are both in
excellent health, one of the sailors has a monkey but
its tail is Sore.—Your affectionate Son,
JOHN.
56
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
That was the last news they could expec for
many months. The Clorinda was not touching
anywhere else. It gave Mrs. Thornton a cold
feeling in the stomach to measure just /ow long.
But she argued, logically enough, that the time
must come to an end, all time does: there is noth-
ing so inexorable as a ship, plodding away, plod-
ding away, all over the place, till at last it quite
cettainly reaches that small speck on the map
which all the time it had intended to reach. Philo-
sophically speaking, a ship in its port of departure
is just as much in its port of arrival: two point-
events differing in time and place, but not in
degree of teality. Ergo, that first letter from
England was as good as written, only not quite...
legible yet. And the same applied to seeing
them. (But here one must stop, for the same
argument applied to old age and death, it wouldn’t
do.)
Yet, a bate fortnight after the arrival of this
first budget, still another letter arrived, from
Havana. The Corinda had put in there unex-
pectedly, it appeared: the letter was from Captain
Marpole.
‘ What a dear man he is,’ said Alice. ‘ He must
have known how anxious we would be for every
sctap of news.’
Captain Marpole’s letter was not so terse and
57
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
vivid as the children’s had been: still, for the news
it contained, I give it in full:
HAVANA DE CUBA.
HonovureEpD Sir AND MapAm,—I hasten to write to
you to relieve you of any uncertainty |
After leaving the Caymans we stood for the Lee-
ward Passage, and sighted the Isle of Pines and False
Cape on the morning of the r9th and Cape S. Antonio
in the evening, but were prevented from rounding
the same by a true Norther, the first of the season, on
the 22nd, however, the wind coming round suffici-
ently we rounded the cape in a lively fashion and
stood N4#E. well away from the Coloradoes which
are a dangerous reef lying off this part of the Cuban
coast. At six o’clock on the morning of the 23rd
there being light airs only I sighted three sail in the
North-East, evidently merchantmen bound on the
same course as ourselves, at the same time a schooner
of similar charaéter was observed standing out to-
wards us from the direction of Black Key, and I
pointed her out to my mate just before going below,
having the wind of us he was within hailing distance
by ten in the morning, judge then of our astonish-
ment when he rudely opened ten or twelve disguised
gun-ports and unmasked a whole broadside of
artillery trained upon us, ordering us at the same
time in the most peremptory manner to heave-to or
he would sink us instanter. There was nothing to
do but to comply although considering the friendly
relations at present existing between the English and
58
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
all other governments my mate was quite at a loss to
account for his action, and imagined it due to a mis-
take which would be speedily explained, we were
immediately boarded by about fifty or seventy
ruffians of the worst Spanish type, armed with knives
and cutlasses, who took possession of the ship and
confined me in my cabin and my mate and crew for-
watd while they ransacked the vessel committing
every possibleexcess broaching rum-casks and break-
ing the necks off wine-bottles and soon a great
number of them were lying about the deck in an in-
toxicated condition, their leader then informed me
he was aware I had a considerable sum in specie on
board and used every possible threat which villainy could
devise to make me disclose its hiding-place, it was
useless for me to assure him that beyond the fifty or
so pounds they had already discovered I carried
none, he grew even more insistent in his demands,
declaring that his information was certain, tearing
down the panelling in my cabin in his search. He
carried off my instruments, my clothes, and all my
personal possessions, even taking from me the poor
Locket in which I was used to carry the portrait of
my Wife, and no appeal to his sensibility, tho’ I shed
tears, would make him return this to him worthless
object, he also tore down and carried away the cabin
bell-pulls, which could be of no possible use to him
and was an act of the most open piracy, at length,
seeing I was obdurate, he threatened to blow up the
ship and all in it if I would not yield, he prepared the
train and would have proceeded to carry out this
i
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
devilish threat if I had not in this last extremity,
consented.
I come now to the latter part of my tale. The
children had taken refuge in the deck-house and had
been up to now free from harm, except for a cuff or
two and the Degrading Sights they must have wit-
nessed, but no sooner was the specie some five thou- .
sand pounds in all mostly my private property and
most of our cargo (chiefly rum sugar coffee and
arrowroot) removed to the schooner than her captain,
in sheer infamous wantonness, had them all brought
out from their refuge your own little ones and the
two Fernandez children who were also on board
and murdered them, every one. ‘That anything so
wicked should look like a man I should not have
believed, had I been told, tho’ I have lived long and
seen all kinds of men, I think he is mad: indeed lam
sure of it; and I take Oath that he shall be brought
to at least that tithe of justice which is in Human
hands, for two days we drifted about in a helpless
condition, for our rigging had all been cut, and at last
fell in with an American man-of-war, who gave us
some assistance, and would have proceeded in pur-
suit of the miscreants himself had he not most ex-
plicit orders to elsewhere. I then put in to the port
of Havana, where I informed the correspondent
of Lloyds, the government, and the representative of
the Times newspaper, and take the opportunity of
writing you this melancholy letter before proceeding
to England.
There is one point on which you will still feel
60
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
some anxiety, considering the sex of some of the
poor innocents, and on which I am glad to be able
to set your minds at rest, the children were taken onto
the other vessel in the evening and I am glad to say
there done to death immediately, and their little bodies
cast into the sea, as I saw with great relief with my
own eyes. There was no time for what you might
fear to have occurred, and this consolation I am glad
to be able to give you.—I have the honour to be,
Your obedient servant,
Jas. MaArpo.e,
Master, barque Clorinda.
Chapter 3
a HE passage from Montego Bay to the Cay-
mans, where the children had written their
letters, is only a matter of a few hours:
indeed, in clear weather one can look right across
from Jamaica to the peak of Tarquinio in Cuba.
There is no harbour; and the anchorage, owing
to the reefs and ledges, is difficult. The Clorinda
brought up off the Grand Cayman, the look-out
man in the chains feeling his way to a white, sandy
patch of bottom which affords the only safe rest-
ing-place there, and causing the anchor to be let
go to windward of it. Luckily, the weather was
fine.
The island, a longish one at the western end of
the group, is low, and covered with palms. Pres-
ently a succession of boats brought out a quantity
of turtles, as Emily described. ‘The natives also
brought parrots to sell to the sailors : but failed to
dispose of many.
At last, however, the uncomfortable Caymans
were left behind, and they set their course towards
the Isle of Pines, a large island in a gulf of the
Cuban coast. One of the sailors, called Cuttis,
had once been wrecked there, and was full of
62
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Stories about it. It is a very unpleasant place ;
spatsely inhabited, and covered with labyrinth-
ane woods. The only food available is a kind of
tree. ‘There is also a species of bean which looks
tempting: but it is deadly poison. The croco-
diles, Curtis said, were so fierce they chased him
and his companions into trees: the only way to
escape from them was to throw them your cap
to wotty: of if you were bold, to disable them
with a blow of a stick on the loins. There were
also a great many snakes, including a kind of
boa.
The current off the Isle of Pines sets strongly to
the east: so the Clorinda kept close inshore, to
cheat it. They passed Cape Corrientes—looking,
when first sighted, like two hummocks in the sea :
they passed Holandes Point, known as False C.
Antonio: but were prevented for some time, as
Captain Marpole told in his letter, from rounding
the true one. For to attempt C. Antonio in a
Norther is to waste your labout.
They lay-to in sight of that long, low, rocky,
treeless promontory in which the great island of
Cuba terminates, and waited. They were so close
that the fisherman’s hut on its southern side was
clearly discernible.
For the children, those first few days at sea had
flashed by like a kind of prolonged circus. There
63
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
is no machine invented for sober purposes so well
adapted also to play as the rigging of a ship: and
the kindly captain, as Mrs. Thornton had divinedy
was willing to give them a lot of freedom, First
came the climbing of a few rungs of the ratlines
in a sailor’s charge: higher each time, till John
attained a gingerly touching of the yard: then
hugged it: then straddled it. Soon, running up
the ratlines and prancing on the yard (as if it were
a mete table-top) had no further thrill for John or
Emily either. (To go out on the yard was not
allowed.)
But when the ratlines had palled, the most last-
ing joy undoubtedly lay in that network of foot-
ropes and chains and stays which spreads outunder
and on each side of the bowsprit. Here, familiar-
ity only bred content. Here, in fine weather, one
could climb or be still: stand, sit, hang, swing, or
lie: now this end up, now that: and all with the
cream of the blue sea being whipt up for one’s own
especial pleasure, almost within touching distance :
and the big white wooden lady (Clorinda herself),
bearing the whole vessel so lightly on her back,
her knees in the hubble-bubble, her cracks almost
filled up with so much painting, vaster than any
living lady, as a constant and unannoying com-
panion.
In the midst there was a kind of spear, its haft
64
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
set against the under-side of the bowsprit, its point
perpendicularly down towards the water—the
edolphin-striker: Hete it was that the old monkey ~
(who had the Sore tail) loved to hang, by the mere
stub which was all a devouring cancer had left him,
chattering to the water. He took no notice of the
children, nor they of him: but both patties grew
attached to each other, for all that.
—How small the children all looked, on a ship,
when you saw them beside the sailors! It was
as if they were a different order of beings! Yet
they were living creatures just the same, full of
promise.
John, with his downy, freckled face, and general
round energeticalness.
‘Emily, with her huge palm-leaf hat, and colour-
less cotton frock tight over her minute impish
erect body : her thin, almost expressionless face :
her dark grey eyes contracted to escape the blaze,
yet shining as it were in spite of themselves : and
her really beautiful lips, that looked almost as if
they were sculptured.
Margaret Fernandez, taller (as midgets go: she
was just thirteen), with her square white face and
tangled hair, her elaboratish clothes.
Her little brother Harry, by some throw-back
for all the world like a manikin Spaniard.
And the smaller Thorntons: Edward, mouse-
65
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
coloured, with a general mousy (but pleasing) ex-
ptession: Rache/, with tight short gold curls and
a fat pink face (John’s colouring watered down) »
and last of all Laura, a queer mite of three with
heavy dark eyebrows, and blue eyes, a big head-
top and a receding chin—as if the Procreative
Spitit was getting a little hysterical by the time it
reached her. A silver-age conception, Laura’s,
decidedly.
When the Norther blew itself out, it soon fell
away almost dead calm. The morning they finally
rounded Cape San Antonio was hot, blazing hot.
But it is never stuffy at sea: there is only this dis-
advantage, that while on land a shady hat protects
you from the sun, at sea nothing can protec you
from that second sun which is mirrored upwards
from the water, strikes under all defences, and
burns the unseasoned skin from all your under-
sides. Poor John! His throat and chin were
a blistered red.
From the point itself there is a whitish bank in
two fathoms, bowed from north to north-east.
The outer side is clean and steep-to, and in fine
weather one can Steer along it by eye. It ends in
Black Key, a rock standing out of the water like a
ship’s hull. Beyond that lies a channel, very foul
and difficult to navigate: and beyond that again
the Coloradoes Reef begins, the first of a long
66
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
chain of reefs following the coast in a north-easterly
dire€tion as far as Honde Bay, two-thirds the way
to Havana. Within the reefs lies the intricate
Canal de Guaniguanico, of which this channel is
the westernmost outlet, with its own tather
dubious little ports. But ocean traffic, needless
to say, shuns the whole box of tricks: and the
Clorinda advisedly stood well away to the north-
watd, keeping her course at a gentle amble for
the open Atlantic.
John was sitting outside the galley with the
sailor called Curtis, who was instructing him in the
neat mystery of a Turk’s-head. Young Henry
Marpole was steering. Emily was messing around
—not talking, just being by him.
As for the other sailors, they were all congte-
gated in a ring, up in the bows, so that one saw
nothing but their backs. But every now and then
a general cuffaw, and a sudden surging of the
whole group, showed they were up to something
ot other.
John presently tiptoed forward, to see what it
might be. He thrust his bullet-head among their
legs, and worked his way in till he had as good a
view as the earliest comer.
He found they had got the old monkey, and
were filling him up with rum. First they gave
him biscuit soaked in it: then they dipped rags in
67
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
a pannikin of the stuff, and squeezed them into his
mouth. Then they tried to make him drink
dite& : but that he would not do—it only wasted
a lot of spirit.
John felt a vague horror at all this: though of
course he did not guess the purpose behind it.
The poor brute shivered and chattered, rolled
his eyes, spluttered. I suppose it must have been
an excruciatingly funny sight. Every now and
then he would seem altogether overcome by the
spirit. Then one of them would lay him on the
top of an old beef barrel—but hey presto, he would
be up like lightning, trying to streak through the
ait over their heads. But he was no bird: they
caught him each time, and set to work to dope
him again.
As for John, he could no more have left the
scene now than Jacko the monkey could.
‘Tt was astonishing what a lot of spirit the
wizened little brute could absorb. He was drunk,
of course : hopelessly, blindly, madly drunk. But
he was not paralytic, not even somnolent : and it
seemed as if nothing could overcome him. So at
last they gave up the attempt. They fetched a
wooden box, and cut a notch in the edge. Then
they put him on the barrel-top, and clapped the
box over him, and after much manceuvring his
gangrenous tail was made to come out through
68
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
the notch. Anaesthetised or not, the operation
on him was to ptoceed. John stared, transfixed,
at that obscene wriggling stump which was all one
could see of the animal: and out of the corner of
his eye he could see at the same time the uproatious
opetators, the tar-stained knife.
But the moment the blade touched flesh, with an
awful screech the mommet contrived to fling off his
cage—leapt on the surgeon’s head—leapt from _
there high in the air—caught the forestay—and
in a twinkling was away and up high in the fore-
rigging.
Then began the hue and cry. Sixteen men
flinging about in lofty actobatics, all to catch one
poor old drunk monkey. For he was drunk as a
lord, and sick asacat. His course varied between
wild and hair-raising leaps (a sort of inspired gym-
nastics), and doleful incompetent .reelings on a
- taut tope which threatened at every moment to
catapult him into the sea. But even so they
could never quite catch him.
No wonder that all the children, now, stood
open-mouthed and open-eyed on the deck beneath
in the sun till their necks nearly broke—such a Free
Fun Fair and Circus !
And no-wonder that on that passenget-schoonet
which Martpole, before going below, had sighted
drifting towards them from the dire€tion of the
69
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Black Key channel, the ladies had left the shade of
the awning and were crowding at the rail, parasols
twitling, lorgnettes and opeta-glasses in action,
all twittering like a cage of linnets. Just too far
off to distinguish the tiny quarry, they might well
have wondered what sott of a bedlam-vessel of
sea-actobats the light easterly air was bearing them
down upon.
They were so interested that presently a boat
was hoisted out, and the ladies—and some gentle-
men as well—crowded into it.
Poor little Jacko missed his hold at last: fell
plump on the deck and broke his neck. That was
the end of him—and of the hunt too, of course.
The aerial ballet was over, in its middle, with no
final tableau. The sailors began, in twos and
threes, to slide to the deck.
But the visitors were already on board.
That is how the Corinda teally was taken.
There was no display of artillery—but then, Cap-
tain Marpole could hardly know this, seeing he
was below in his bunk at the time. Henry was
Steering by that sixth sense which only comes into
operation when the other five are asleep. The
mate and crew had been so intent on what they
were doing that the Flying Dutchman himself
might have laid alongside, for all they cated.
7°
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
ii
Indeed, the whole manceuvte was executed so
quietly that Captain Marpole never even woke—
incredible though this will seem to a seaman.
But then, Marpole had begun life as a successful
coal-merchant.
The mate and crew were bundled into the
fo’c’sle (the Fox-hole, the children thought it was
called), and confined there, the scuttle being
secured with a couple of nails.
The children themselves were shepherded, as
related, into the deck-house, where the chairs, and
perfe&tly useless pieces of old rope, and broken
tools, and dried-up paint-pots were kept, without
taking alarm. But the door was immediately shut
on them. ‘They had to wait for hours and hours
before anything else happened—nearly all day, in
fac&: and they got very bored, and rather cross.
The actual number of the men who had effected
the capture cannot have been more than eight or
nine, most of them ‘women’ at that, and not
atmed—at least with any visible weapon. Buta
second boatload soon followed them from the
schoonet. ‘These, for form’s sake, were armed
with muskets. But there was no possible resist-
ance to fear. ‘I'wo long nails through the scuttle
can secute any number of men pretty effectually.
7I
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
With this second boatload came both the cap-
tain andthe mate. The former was a clumsy gteat
fellow, with a sad, silly face. He was bulky; yet
so ill-proportioned one got no impression of
power. He was modestly dressed in a drab shote-
going suit: he was newly shaven, and his sparse
hair was pomaded so that it lay in a few dark
ribbons across his baldish head-top. But all this
shore-decency of appearance only accentuated his
big splodgy brown hands, stained and scatred and
corned with his calling. Moreover, instead of
boots he wore a pair of gigantic heel-less slippers
in the Moorish manner, which he must have sliced
with a knife out of some pair of dead sea-boots.
Even his great spreading feet could hardly keep
them on, so that he was obliged to walk at the
slowest of shuffles, flop-flop along the deck. He .
Stooped, as if always afraid of banging his head on
something ; and carried the backs of his hands
forward, like an orang-outang.
Meanwhile the men set to work methodically
but very quietly to remove the wedges that held
the battens of the hatches, getting ready to haul
up the cargo.
Their leader took several turns up and down the
deck before he seemed able to make up his mind to
the interview: then lowered himself into Mar-
pole’s cabin, followed by his mate.
72
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
This mate was a small man: very fair, and in-
telligent-looking beside his chief. He was almost
dapper, in a quiet way, in his dress.
They found Captain Marpole even now only
half awake: and the stranger stood for a moment
in silence, nervously twiddling his cap in his hands.
When he spoke at last, it was with a soft German
accent :
‘Excuse me,’ he began, ‘ but would you have
the goodness to lend me a few stores P’
_ Captain Marpole stated in astonishment, first at
him and then at the much be-painted faces of the
‘ladies ’ pressed against his cabin skylight.
‘Who the devil are you?’ he contrived to ask
at last.
‘T hold a commission in the Colombian navy,’
the Evareet explained: ‘and I am in need of a
few stores.’
(Meanwhile his men had the see off, and
were ptepating to help themselves to everything
in the ship.)
Marpole looked him up and down. It was
barely conceivable that even the Colombian navy
should have such a figute of an officer. Then his
eye wandered back to the skylight :
“If you call yourself a man-of-war, sit, who in
Heaven’s name ate those?’ As he pointed, the
smitking faces hastily retreated,
73
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
The stranger blushed.
‘They ate rather difficult to explain,’ he ad-
mitted ingenuously.
‘If you had said Turkish navy, that would have
been more teasonable-sounding !’ said Marpole.
But the stranger did not seem to take the joke.
He étood, silent, in a charateristic attitude : rock-
ing himself from foot to foot, and rubbing his
cheek on his shoulder.
Suddenly Marpole’s eat caught the muffled
tacketing forward. Almost at the same time a
bump that shivered the whole barque told that the
schooner had been laid alongside.
‘What ’s that P’ he exclaimed. ‘ Is there some
one in my hold ?’
‘Stores .. .? mumbled the stranger.
Matpole up to now had lain growling in his
bunk like a dog in its kennel. Now for the first
time realising that something serious was afoot he
flung himself out and made for the companion-
way. ‘The little silent fair man tripped him up,
and he fell against the table.
‘You had much better stay here, yes?’ said
the big man. ‘ My fellows shall keep a tally,
you shall be paid in full for everything we
take.’
The eyes of the marine coal-merchant gleamed
momentarily :
74
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
‘You ’Il have to pay for this outrage to a pretty
tune!’ he growled. ;
‘I will pay you,’ said the stranger, with a sudden
magnificence in his voice, ‘at the very least five
thousand pounds ! ’
Marpole stared in astonishment.
‘I will write you an order on the Colombian
government for that amount,’ the other went on.
Matpole thumped the table, almost speechless :
*“D’you think I believe that cock-and-bull
Story P’ he thundered.
Captain Jonsen made no protest.
“Do you realise that you ate technically guilty
of piracy, making a forced requisition on a British
ship like this, even if you pay every farthing P’
Still Jonsen made no reply : though the bored
expression of his mate was lit up for a moment by
a smile.
“You ’ll pay me in cash!’ Marpole concluded.
Then he went off on a fresh tack : ‘ Though how
the devil you got on board without being called
beats me !—Where ’s my mate ?’
Jonsen began in a toneless voice, as if by rote:
‘I will write you an order for five thousand
pounds: three thousand for the stores, and two
thousand you will give me in money.’
‘We know you ’ve got specie on board,’ inter-
jected the little fair mate, speaking for the first time.
75
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
‘Our information is certain!’ declared Jonsen.
Marpole at last went white and began to sweat.
It took even Feat an extraordinarily long time to
penetrate his thick skull. But he denied that he
had any treasure on board.
‘Is that your answer ?’ said Jonsen. He drew
a heavy pistol from his side pocket. * If you do not
tell us the truth, your life shall pay the forfeit.’
His voice was peculiarly gentle, and mechanical,
as if he did not attach much meaning to what he
said. ‘Do not expect mercy, for this is my pro-
fession, and in it I am inured to blood.’
A frightful squawking from the deck above told
Marpole that his chickens were being moved to
new quarters.
In an agony of feeling Marpole told him that he
had a wife and children, who would be left desti-
tute if his life was taken.
Jonsen, with rather a perplexed look on his face,
put the gun back in his pocket, and the two of
them began to search for themselves, at the same
time stripping the saloon and cabins of everything
they contained: firearms, wearing apparel, the
bedclothes, and even (as Marpole with a rare touch
of accuracy mentioned in his report) the bell-pulls.
Overhead there was a continuous bumping:
the rolling of casks, cases, etc.
‘Remember,’ Jonsen went on over his shoulder
76
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
while he searched, ‘ money cannot recall life, nor
in the least avail you when you are dead. If you
tegatd your life in the least, at once acquaint me
with the hiding-place, and your life shall be safe.’
Matpole’s only reply was again to invoke the
thought of his wife and children (he was, as a
matter of fact, a widower: and his only relative,
a niece, would be the better off by his death to the
tune of some ten thousand pounds).
But this reiteration seemed to give the mate an
idea: and he began to talk to his chief rapidly ina
language Matpole had never even heard. Fort a
moment a curious glint came into Jonsen’s eyes
but soon he was chuckling in the sentimentalest
manner, and rubbing his hands.
The mate went on deck to prepare things.
Marpole had no inkling of what was’ afoot.
The mate went on deck to ptepate his plan, what-
ever it was : and Jonsen busied himself with a last
futile search for the hiding-place, in silence.
Presently the mate shouted down to him, and
he ordered Matpole on deck.
Poor Marpole groaned. Unloading Catgo is in-
clined to be a messy business any way: but these
visitors had been none too careful. There is no
smell in the world worse than when molasses and
bilge-water marry: now it was let loose like ten
thousand devils. His heart was almost. broken
F Ty
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
when he saw the havoc that had been made with
the cargo: broken cases, casks, bottles, all about
the deck: everything in the greatest confusion :
tarpaulins cut to pieces : hatches broken.
From the deck-house came the piercing voice
of Laura :
‘I want to come out !”
The Spanish ladies seemed to have returned to
the schooner. His own men were shut up in the
forc’sle. It was obvious where all the children
wete, for Laura was not the only vociferator. But
the only persons to be seen were six members of
the visiting crew, who Stood in a line, facing the
deck-house, a musket apiece.
It was the little mate who now took charge of
the situation :
‘Where is your specie hid, Captain ?’
The musketeers having their backs to him, “ Go
to the Devil!’ replied Marpole.
A Startling volley rang out : six neat holes were
pundtured in the top of the deck-house.
‘Hi! Steady there, what are you doing ?’
John cried out indignantly from within.
‘ If you refuse to tell us, next time their aim will
be a foot lower.’
‘You fiends!’ cried Marpole.
‘ Will you tell me P’
‘No!’
78
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
waar 1?
The second row of holes can only have missed
the taller children by a few inches.
There was a moment’s silence: then a sudden
wild shriek from within the deck-house. It was
so terrified a sound not their own mothers could
have told which throat it came from. One only,
though.
The stranger-captain had been slouching about
in an agitated way : but at that shriek he turned on
Matpole, his face purple with a sudden fury :
* Now will you say ?’
But Marpole was now completely master of
himself. He did not hesitate :
*“NO!?’
* Next time he gives the order it will be to shoot
right through their little bodies ! ’
_ So that was what Marpole had meant in his
letter by ‘ every. possible threat which villainy could
devise’! But even by this he was not to be
daunted :
“No, I tell you!’
Heroic obstinacy! But instead of giving the
fatal order, Jonsen lifted a paw like a beat’s, and
banged Marpole’s jaw with it. The latter fell to
the deck, stunned.
It was then they took the children out of the
deck-house.
to
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
They were not really much frightened ; except
Margaret, who did seem to be taking it all to heart
rather. Being shot at is so unlike what one ex-
peéts it to be that one can hardly conneét the two
ideas enough to have the appropriate emotions,
the first few times. It is not half so startling as
some one jumping out on you with a * Bvo !’ in the
dark, for instance. The boys were crying a little:
the girls were hot and cross and hungty.
‘ What were you doing ?” Rachel asked brightly
of one of the firing-partty.
But only the captain and the mate could speak
English. ‘The latter, ignoring Rachel’s question,
explained that they were all to go on board the
schooner—‘ to have some supper,’ he said.
He had alla sailor’s reassuring charm of manner.
So under the charge of two Spanish seamen they
were helped over the bulwarks onto the smaller
vessel, which was just casting off.
There the strange sailors broke open a whole
case of crystallised fruits, on which they might turn
the edge of their long appetites as much as they
would.
When poor stunned Captain Marpole came to
his senses, it was to find himself tied to the main-
mast. Several handfuls of shavings and splintered
wood were piled round his feet, and Jonsen was
80
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
sprinkling them plentifully with gun-powder—
though not perhaps enough, it is true, to ‘ blow
up the ship and all in it.’
The small fair mate stood at hand in the gather-
ing dusk with a lighted torch, ready to fire the
pyre.
What could a man do in such straits? At that
dreadful moment the gallant old fellow had to
admit that he was beaten at last. He told them
where his freight-money—some {£900—was hid-
den: and they let him go.
Just as the darkness closed in, the last of the
pirates returned to their ship. Not a sound was
to be heard of the children : but Marpole guessed
that they had been taken there too.
Before releasing his crew he lit a lantern and
began a sort of inventory of what was gone. It
was heart-breaking enough : besides the cargo, all
his spare sails, cordage, provisions, guns, paint,
powder: all his wearing apparel, and that of his
mate: all nautical instruments gone, cabin stores
—the saloon in fact gutted of everything, not even
a knife or spoon left, tea or sugar, nor a second
shirt to his back left. Only the children’s luggage
was left untouched : and the turtles. Their mel-
ancholy sighing was the sole sound to be heard.
But it was almost as heart-breaking to see what
the pirates had ft: anything damaged, such worn-
81
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
out and useless geat as he had been only waiting
for some ‘ storm’ to wash overboard—not one of
these eyesores was missing.
What, in Heaven’s name, was the use of an
insurance policy ? He began to colleé the rub-
bish himself and dump it over the side.
But Captain Jonsen saw him :
“Hi!” he shouted: ‘ You dirty svindler! I
will write to Lloyds and expose you! I will write
myself!’ He was horribly shocked at the othet’s
dishonesty.
So Marpole had to give it up, for the time at
any tate: took a spike and broke open the fo’c’sle :
and as well as the sailors found Margaret’s brown
nutse. She had hidden there the whole day:
probably from motives of fright.
iit
You would have thought that supper on the
schoonet that night would have been a hilarious
affair. But, somehow, it was manque.
A prize of such value had naturally put the crew
in the best of humours: and a meal which con-
sisted mainly of crystallised fruit, followed as an
afterthought by bread and chopped onions served
in one enormous communal bowl, eaten on the
82
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
open deck under the stars, after bed-time, should
have done the same by the children. But never-
theless both parties were seized by a sudden, ovet-
powering, and most unexpected fit of shyness.
Consequently no state banquet was ever so formal,
ot so boring. |
I suppose it was the lack of a common language
which first generated the infetion. The Spanish
sailors, used enough to this difficulty, grinned,
pointed, and bobbed: but the children retired
into a display of good manners which it would
cettainly have surprised their parents to see.
Wheteon the sailors became equally formal: and
one poor monkeyfied little fellow who by nature
belched continually was so be-nudged and be-
winked by his companions, and so covered in con-
fusion of his own accord, that presently he went
- away to eat by himself. Even then, so silent was
this revel, he could still be heard faintly belching,
half the ship’s length away.
Perhaps it would have gone better if the captain
and mate had been there, with their English. But
they were too busy, looking over the personal be-
longings they had brought from the barque, sott-
ing out by the light of a lantern anything too
easily identifiable and reluctantly committing it to
the sea.
It was at the loud splashes made by a couple of
83
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
empty trunks, Stamped in large letters JAS. MAR-
POLE, that a toat of unassumed indignation arose
from the neighbouring barque. The two paused
in their work, astonished: why should a crew
already spoiled of all they possessed take it so
hardly when one heaved a couple of old worthless
trunks in the sea ?
It was inexplicable.
They continued their task, taking no further
notice of the Clorinda.
‘ Once supper was over, the social situation be-
came even mote awkward. The children stood
about, not knowing what to do with their hands,
ot even their legs: unable to talk to their hosts,
and feeling it would be rude to talk to each other,
wishing badly that it was time to leave. If only it
had been light they could have been happy enough
exploring : but in the darkness there was nothing
to do, nothing whatever.
The sailors soon found occupations of theit
own: and the captain and mate, as I have said,
wete already busy.
Once the sorting was over, however, there was
nothing for Jonsen to do except return the chil-
dren to the barque, and get well clear while the
breeze and the darkness lasted.
But on hearing those splashes, Marpole’s lively
imagination had interpreted them in his own way.
84
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
They suggested that thete was now no feason to
wait: indeed, every reason to be gone.
I think he was quite honestly misled.
It was after all but a small slip to say he had “seen
with his own eyes’ what he had heard with his
‘own eats: and the intention was pious.
He set his men feverishly to work: and when
Captain Jonsen looked his way again, the Clorinda,
with every stitch spread in the starlight, was already
half a mile to leeward.
To pursue her, right in the track of shipping,
was out of the question. Jonsen had to content
himself with staring after her through his night-
glass. |
iv
Captain Jonsen set the little monkeyfied sailor,
who had been so mortified earlier in the evening,
to clear the schoonet’s fore-hold. The warps and
brooms and fenders it contained were all piled to
one side, and a sufficiency of bedclothes for the
guests was provided from the plunder.
But nothing could now thaw them. They
clambered down the ladder and received theit
blanket apiece in an uncomfortable silence. Jon-
sen hung about, anxious to be helpful in this
matter of getting into beds which were not there,
but not knowing how to set about it. So he gave
85
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
it up at last, and swung himself up through the
fore-hatch, talking to himself.
The last they saw of him was his fantastic slip-
pers, hanging each from a big toe, outlined against
the Stars : but it never entered their heads to laugh.
Once, however, the familiar comfort of a
blanket under their chins had begun to have its
effet, and they were obviously quite alone, a little
life did begin to return into these dumb statues.
The darkness was profound, only accentuated
by the starlit square of the open hatchway. First
the long silence was broken by some one turning
over, almost freely. Then presently :
Laura (¢” slow sepulchral tones). 1 don’t like
this bed.
RAcuHEL (ditto). Ido.
Laura. It’s a horrid bed; there isn’t any !
rake Sh! Go to sleep !
Joun.
Epwarpb. I smell cockroaches.
Emizty. Sh!
Epwarpb (loudly and hopefully). They 711 bite all
out nails off, because we haven’t washed, and our
skin, and our hair, and.
Laura. ‘There ’sacockroach in my bed! Get
out |
(You could hear the brute go zooming away.
But Laura was already out too.)
86
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Emiry. Laura! Go back to bed!
Laura. Ican’t when thete’s a cockroach in it !
Joun. Get into bed again, you little fool!
He’s gone long ago!
Laura. But I expeé he has left his wife.
Harry. ‘They don’t have wives, they ’re wives
themselves.
RacueLt. Ow!— Laura, stop it !— Emily,
Lauta ’s walking on me !
Emity. lLau-rer !
Laura. Well, I must walk on something !
Emity. Go to sleep !
(Stlence for a while.)
Laura. I haven’t said my prayers.
Emity. Well, say them lying down.
Racwet. She mustn’t, that’s lazy.
Joun. Shut up, Rachel, she must.
RacHEt. It’s wicked! You go to sleep in the
middle then. People who go to sleep in the middle
ought to be damned, they ought —Oughtn’t they ?
(Stlence.) Oughtn’t they? (S#M silence.) Emily,
I say, oughtn’t they ?
Joun. NO!
RacueEt (dreamily). 1 think there ’s lots more
people ought to be damned than are.
(Silence again.)
Harry. Marghie.
(Szlence.)
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Marghie !
(Szlence.)
Joun. What’s up with Marghie? Won’t she
speak
(A faint sob ts heard.)
Harry. I don’t know.
(Another sob.)
Joun. Is she often like this ?
Harry. She’s an awful ass sometimes.
Joun. Marghie, what ’s up ?
MarGaret (miserably). Let me alone !
Racuet. I believe she’s frightened! (Chants
tauntingly) Marghie’s got the bogies, the bogies,
the bogies !
MarGarer (sobbing out loud). Oh you little
fools ! »
Joun. Well, what’s the matter with you then ?
MarGarer (after a pause). 1’m older than any
of you.
Harry. Well, that’s a funny reason to be
frightened !
MarGareEr. It isn’t.
Harry. It is!
MARGARET (warming to the argument). It isn’t, I
tell you !
Harry. Its!
MarGarer (smugly). ‘That’s simply because
you ’te all too young to know... .
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Joun. Oh, hit her, Emily !
Emity (sdepi/y). Hit her yourself.
Harry. But, Marghie, why ate we here ?
(No answer.)
Emily, why ate we here ?
Emrty (indifferently). 1 don’t know. I expect
they just wanted to change us.
Harry. I expeé so. But they never fof/ us
we wete going to be changed.
Emity. Grown-ups never do tell us things.
89
Chapter 4
p SHE children all slept late, and all woke at
the same moment as if by clockwork.
They sat up, and yawned uniformly, and
stretched the stiffness out of their legs and backs
(they were lying on solid wood, remember).
The schooner was steady, and people tramping
about the deck. The main-hold and fore-hold
were all one: and from where they were they
could see the main-hatch had been opened. The
captain appeared through it legs first, and dropped
onto the higgledy-piggledy of the Clorinda’s
cargo.
For some time they simply stared at him. He
looked uneasy, and was talking to himself as he
tapped now this case with his pencil, now that ;
and presently shouted rather fiercely to people
on deck.
‘ All right, all right,’ came from above the in-
juted voice of the mate. ‘ There ’s no such hurry
as all that.’
On which the captain’s mutterings to himself
swelled, as if ten people were conversing at once
in his chest.
‘May we get up yet ?” asked Rachel.
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Captain Jonsen spun round—he had forgotten
their existence.
beh?’
‘ May we get up, please ? ’
‘You can go to the debble.’ He muttered this
so low the children did not hear it. But it was not
lost on the mate.
‘Hey! Ey! Ey!’ he called down, reprov-
ingly.
‘Yes! Get up! Goondeck! Here!’ The
captain viciously set up a short ladder for them
to climb through the hatch.
They wete greatly astonished to find the
schooner was no longer at sea. Instead, she was
snugly moored against a little wooden wharf, in a
pleasant land-locked bay ; with a pleasant but un-
tidy village, of white wooden houses with palm-
leaf roofs, behind it; and the tower of a small
sandstone chutch emerging from the abundant
greenery. On the quay were a few well-dressed
loungers, watching the preparations for unloading.
The mate was directing the labours of the crew,
who wete rigging the cargo-gaft and getting ready
for a hot morning’s work.
The mate nodded cheerfully to the children, but
thereafter took no notice of them, which was
rather mortifying. The truth is that the man
was busy.
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At the same time there emerged from some-
where aft a collection of the oddest-looking young
men. Margaret decided she had never seen such
beautiful young men before. They were slim, yet
nicely rounded : and dressed in exquisite clothes
(if a trifle threadbare). But their faces! Those
beautiful olive-tinted ovals! Those large, black-
ringed, soft brown eyes, those unnaturally carmine
lips! ‘They minced across the deck, chattering to
each other in high-pitched tones, ‘ twittering like
a cage of linnets . . .’ and made their way on shore.
‘ Who are they ?” Emily asked the captain, who
had just re-emerged from below.
‘Who ate who 2?’ he murmured absently, with-
out looking round. ‘Oh, those? Fairies.’ .
‘Hey! Yey! Yey!’ cried the mate, more
disapprovingly than ever. $
‘ Fairies ?’ cried Emily in astonishment.
But Captain Jonsen began to blush. He went
crimson from the nape of his neck to the bald
patches on the top of his head, and left.
‘He is silly!’ said Emily.
‘I wonder if we go onto the land yet,’ said
Edward.
“Wed better wait until we ’re told, hadn’t we,
Emily ?’ said Harry.
‘I didn’t know England would be like this,’
said Rachel: ‘ it’s very like Jamaica.’
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af |
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* This isn’t England,’ said John, ‘ you stupid !’
‘But it must be,’ said Rachel: ‘ England ’s
where we ’re going.’
“We don’t get to England yet,’ said John: ‘ it
must be somewhete we ’re stopping at, like when
we got all those turtles.’
“I like stopping at places,’ said Laura.
“I don’t,’ said Rachel.
“I do, though,’ pursued Laura.
* Whete ate those young men gone ?’ Margaret
asked the mate. ‘ Are they coming back ?’
* They ’II just come back to be paid, after we ’ve
sold the cargo,’ he answered,
‘Then they ’re not living on the ship?’ she
“pursued,
“No, we hited them from Havana.’
“But what for ?’ ,
He looked at her in surprise : ‘ Why, those ate
the “ladies” we had on board, to look like
passengers—You didn’t think they were teal
ladies, did you P’
“What, were they dressed up?’ asked Emily
excitedly ; ‘ What fun ! ’
“T like dressing up,’ said Laura.
‘I don’t,’ said Rachel, ‘I think it ’s babyish,’
“I thought they were real ladies,’ admitted
Emily.
“We ’re a respectable ship’s crew, we are,’ said
= 93
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the mate, a trifle stiffly—and without too good
logic, when you come to think of it. ‘ Here, you
go on shore and amuse yourselves.’
So the children went ashore, holding hands in a
long row, and promenaded the town in a formal
sort of way. Laura wanted to go off by herself,
but the others would not let her: and when they
returned, the line was still unbroken. They had
seen all there was to see, and no one had taken the
least notice of them (so far as they were awate),
and they wanted to start asking questions again.
It was, then, a charming little sleepy old place,
in its way, this Santa Lucia: isolated on the for-
gotten western end of Cuba between Nombre de
Dios and the Rio de Puercos: cut off from the
open sea by the intricate nature of the channels
through the reefs and the Banks of Isabella,
channels only navigable to the pra@tised and creep- _
ing local coasting craft and shunned like poison e
by bigger traffic: on land isolated by a hundred
miles of forest from Havana.
Time was, these little ports of the Canal de
Guaniguanico had been pretty prosperous, as bases
for pitates: but it was a fleeting prosperity.
There came the heroic attack of an American
squadron under Captain Allen, in 1823, on the
Bay of Sejuapo, their headquarters. From that
blow (although it took many years to take full
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effect) the industry never really recovered: it
dwindled and dwindled, like hand-weaving. One
could make money much faster in a city like
Havana, and with less risk (if less respedtably).
Piracy had long since ceased to pay, and should
have been scrapped years ago: but a vocational
tradition will last on a long time after it has ceased
to be economic, in a decadent form. Now, Santa
Lucia—and piracy—continued to exist because
they always had: but for no other reason. Such
a haul as the Corinda did not come once in a blue
moon. Every year the amount of land under
cultivation dwindled, and the pirate schooners
wete abandoned to rot against the whatves or
ignominiously sold as traders. ‘The young men
left for Havana or the United States. The maidens
yawned. ‘The local grandees increased in dignity
- as their numbers and property dwindled: an
idyllic, simple-minded country community, oblivi-
ous of the outer world and of its own approach-
ing oblivion.
‘I don’t think I should like to live here,’ John
decided, when they got back to the ship.
Meanwhile the cargo had been unloaded onto
the quay: and after the siesta a crowd of about
a hundred people gathered round, poking and dis-
cussing. The auction was about to begin. Cap-
tain Jonsen tramped about rather in the way of
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
evetybody, but especially annoying the mate by
shouting contrary directions every minute. The
latter had a ledger, and a number of labels with
numbets on them which he was pasting onto the
various bales and packages. ‘The sailors were
building a kind of temporary stage—the thing was
to be done in style.
Every:-moment the crowd increased. Because
they all talked Spanish it was a pantomime to the
children : like puppets acting, not like real people
moving and talking. So they discovered what a
fascinating game it is to watch foreigners, whose
very simplest words mean nothing to you, and try
to guess what they are about.
Moteover, these were all such funny-looking —
people: they moved about as if they were kings, —
and spat all the time, and smoked thin black cigars,
the blue smoke of which ascended from their
enormous hats as from censers.
At one moment there was a diversion—the
crowd suddenly gaped, and there staggered onto
the stage the whole crew of the schooner carrying
a huge pait of scales: it was always on the point
of being too much for them, and running suddenly
away with them in another direction,
There wete quite a number of ladies in the
crowd—old ones, they seemed to the children.
Some were thin and dried up, like monkeys: but
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most wete fat, and one was fatter than all of them
and treated with the greatest respect (perhaps for
her moustache). She was the wife of the Chief
Magistrate—Sefiora del Illustrious Juzgado del
Municipal de Santa Lucia, to give her her title.
She had a rocking-chair of suitable strength and
width, which was cattied by a shott squinting
negto and set in the very middle of the scene,
tight in front of the platform. There she throned
herself; and the negro stood behind her, holding
a violet silk sunshade over her head.
No one can doubt that she immediately became
the most noticeable thing in the picture.
She had a powerful bass voice, and when she
utteted some jocundity (as she tepeatedly did),
evety one heard it, however much they were
chattering among themselves, —
The children, as was their custom, wormed their
way without any excess of civility through the
ctowd and grouped themselves round her throne.
The captain either did not know, or suddenly
refused to know, a single word of Spanish: so the
auGtioneering devolved on the mate. The latter
mounted the stage: and with a great assumption
of competence began.
But auctioneering is an att : it is as easy to write
a sonnet in a foreign tongue as to condud a suc-
cessful auction. One must have at one’s com-
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mand eloquence without a hitch: the faculty of
kindling an audience, amusing them, castigating
them, converting them, till they rattle out incre-
ments as a camp-meeting rattles out Amens: till
they totally forget the worth (and even the nature)
of the lot, and begin to take a teal pride in a long
tun of bidding—as a champion does in a long
break at billiards.
This little Viennese had been to a good school,
itis true: for he had once resided in Wales, where
one sees auctioneering in its finest flower. In
Welsh, ot English, or even in his native tongue,
he could have acquitted himself fairly well: but in
Spanish, just that margin of power was lacking to
him. ‘The audience remained stern, cold, critical,
bidding grudgingly.
As if this language difficulty were not in itself
enough, there sat that overpowering old dame on
her throne, distraéting with her jokes whatever
vestige of attention he might otherwise have
managed to arouse.
When the third lot of coffee came to be dealt
with, there was even the beginning of a rather
nasty row. The children were highly scandalised :
they had never seen grown-ups being rude to one
another before. ‘The captain had undertaken the
weighing: and it was something to do with a
habit he had of leaning against the scales while he
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tead them. Being short-sighted, he could see the
figures much more clearly like that: but it dis-
pleased the buyers, and they had a lot to say
about it.
The captain, mortified, wrung his hands, and
began to answer them in Danish. They rejoined
in Spanish even more stingingly. He stumped
off in a sulk: they could all conduét his affairs
without him, if they weren’t prepared to treat
him with a little consideration. ,
But who would be less partial? The mate,
angty, maintained that to ele one of the buyers
was equally objectionable.
Thereon an earthquake began in the fat old lady,
and gradually gathered enough force to lift her
onto her feet. She took John by the shoulders,
and pushed him before her to the scales. Then
in a few witty, ringing words she suggested her
solution—/e should do the weighing.
The audience were pleased: but as soon as
John understood he went very ted, and wanted to
escape. The rest of the children, on the other
hand, were eaten with envy.
‘Mayn’t I help too?’ piped Rachel.
The despairing mate thought he saw just a for-
lorn hope in this. While John was being in-
structed, he gathered the other children: and out
of the heap of miscellaneous clothing rigged them
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all out in a sort of fancy dress. ‘Then he gave
them the samples to carry round, and the sale
began anew.
It had now assumed rather the character of a
parochial bazaar. Even the Vicar was present—
though less well shaved than he would have been
in England, and cunninger-looking. He was one
of the only buyers.
The children thoroughly enjoyed themselves,
and minced and pranced and tugged each othet’s
turbans. But the ctowd was a Latin one, not
Nordic: and their endearing tricks failed alto-
gether to arouse any interest. The sale went
worse than ever.
There was only one exception, and that was the
important old lady. Once her attention had been
called (by her own a) to the children, it fixed
itself on one of them, on Edward. She drew him
to her bosom, like a mother in melodrama, and
with her hairy mouth gave him three resounding
kisses.
Edward could no more have struggled than
if caught by a boa. Moreover, the portentous
woman fascinated him, as if she had been a boa
indeed. He lay in her arms limp, self-conscious,
and dejected: but without active thought of
escape.
And so the business went on: on the one hand
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the unheeded drone of the mate, on the other the
great creature Still keeping up her witticisms, still
dominating everything: all of a sudden remem-
bering Edwatd, and giving him a couple of kisses
like so many bombs: then clean forgetting all
about him: then remembering him again, and
hugging him: then dropping her salts: then
neatly dropping Edward : then suddenly twisting
round to launch a dart into the crowd behind her
—she was the despair of that unhappy auctioneer,
who saw lot after lot fall for a tenth of its value,
ot even find no bidder at all.
Captain Jonsen, however, had his own idea GE
how to enliven a patochial bazaar that is proving
a frost. He went on board, and mixed several
gallons of that potion known in alcoholic circles
as Hangman’s Blood (which is compounded of
tum, gin, brandy, and porter). Innocent (merely
beety) as it looks, refreshing as it tastes, it has the
property of increasing tather than allaying thirst,
and so, once it has made a breach, soon demolishes
the whole fort.
This he poured out into mugs, merely remark-
ing that it was a noted English cordial, and gave it
to the children to distribute among the crowd,
At once the Cubans began to show mote interest
in them than when they came bearing samples of
attowroot : and with their popularity their happi-
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ness increased, and like rococo Ganymedekins and
Hebelettes they darted about the crowd, distribut-
ing the enticing poison to all who would. 4
When he saw what was on foot, the mate wiped
his mouth in despair.
‘Oh you fool!’ he groaned.
But the captain himself was highly pleased with
his ruse :, kept rubbing his hands, and grinning,
and winking.
‘ That 71] liven ’em, eh ?’
‘Wait and see!’ was all the mate let himself |
say. ‘ You just wait and see!’
“Look at Edward!’ said Emily to Margaret
ina pause. ‘It’s perfectly sickening ! ’
It was. The very first mug rendered the fat
sefiora even more motherly. Edward by now
was fascinated, was in her powet completely. He
sat and gazed up in her little black eyes, his own
large brown ones glazed with sentiment. He
avoided her moustache, it is true: but on her
cheek he was returning her kisses earnestly. All
this, of course, without the possibility of their
exchanging a single word—pure instin@. ‘With
a fork drive Nature out . . .—one would gladly
have taken a fork to Nature, on that occasion.
Meanwhile, on the rest of the crowd the liquor
was having exactly the effect the mate had foreseen.
Instead of stimulating them, it dissolved com-
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_ pletely whatever vestiges of attention they were
still giving to the sale. He stepped down from
- the platform—egave it all up in despair. For they
had now broken up into little groups, which dis-
cussed and argued their own affairs as if they were
in a café, He in his turn went on board, and
shut himself in his cabin—Captain Jonsen could
deal with the mess he had made himself !
Butalas! No worse host than Jonsen was ever
born: he was utterly incapable of either under-
Standing or controlling a crowd. All he could
think of doing was plying them with more.
For the children the speacle was an absorbing
one. The whole nature of these people, as they
drank, seemed to be changing: under their very
eyes something seemed to be breaking up, like
ice melting. Remember that to them this was a
pantomime: no word spoken to explain, and so
the eyes exercised a peculiar clearness.
It was tather as if the whole crowd had been
immersed in water, and something dissolved out
of them while the general structure yet remained.
The tone of their voices changed, and they began
to talk much slower, to move more slowly and
elaborately. The expression of their faces became
mote candid, and yet more mask-like : hiding less,
there was also less to hide. ‘Two men even began
to fight : but they fought so incompetently it was
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like a fight in a poetic play. Conversation, which
before had a beginning and an end, now grew
shapeless and interminable, and the women
laughed a lot.
One old gentleman in most respectable clothes
settled himself on the dirty ground at full length,
with his head in the shade of the throned lady,
spread a handkerchief over his face, and went to
sleep: three other middle-aged men, holding
each other with one hand to establish contaé& and
using the other for emphasis, kept up a con-
tinuous clacking talk, that faltered intolerably
though never quite stopping—like a very old
engine.
A dog tan in and out among them all wagging
its tail, but no one kicked it. Presently it found
the old gentleman who was asleep on the ground,
and began licking his ear excitedly: it had never
had such a chance before.
The old lady also had fallen asleep, a little crook-
edly—she might even have slipped off her chair if
her negro had not buttressed her up. Edward
got off her, and went and joined the other children
rather shamefacedly : but they would not speak
to him.
Jonsen looked tound him perplexedly. Why
had Otto abandoned the sale, now the crowd were
all primed and ready? Probably he had some
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good teason, though. He was an incomprehens-
ible man, that mate: but clever.
The truth is that Captain Jonsen was himself a
man with a very weak head for liquor, and so he
very seldom touched it, and knew little of the
subtler aspects of its effects.
He paced up and down the dusty wharf at his
usual slow shuffle, his head sunk forward in
wrtetchedness, occasionally wringing his hands in
the naturalest way, and even whimpering. When
the priest came up to him confidentially and
offered him a price for all that remained unsold
he simply shook his head and continued his
shuffle.
There was something a little nightmare-like in
the whole scene which riveted the children’s
attention, and was very near the border of fright-
ening them. It was with something of a struggle
that at last Margaret said ‘ Let ’s go on the ship.’
So they all went on board: and feeling a little
unprotected even there, descended into the hold,
which was the safest place because they had already
slept init. They sat down on the kelson without
doing or saying much, still with a vague apprehen-
sion, till boredom at last eliminated it.
‘Oh I wish I had brought my paint-box !’ said
Emily, with a sigh fetched right up from her boots.
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ii
That night, after they had all gone to bed, they
saw in a half-asleep state a lantern bobbing up and
down in the open hatch. It was held by José, the
little monkeyfied one (they had already decided
he was the nicest of the crew). He was gtinning
winningly, and beckoning to them.
Emily was too sleepy to move, and so were
Laura and Rachel: so leaving them to lie, the
others—Margaret, Edward, and John—scrambled
on deck.
It was mysteriously quiet. Not a sign of the
ctew, but for José. In the bright starlight the
town looked unnormally beautiful: there was
music coming from one of the big houses up by
the church. José conducted them ashore and up
to this house: tiptoed up to the jalousies and
signed to them to follow him.
As the light struck his face it became trans-
figured, so affected was he by the opulence
within.
The children craned up to the level of the
windows and peered in too, oblivious of the
mosquitoes making havoc of their necks.
It was a very grand sight. ‘This was the house
of the Chief Magistrate: and he was giving a
dinner in honour of Captain Jonsen and his mate.
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There he sat at the head of the table, in uniform ;
very stiff, yet his little beard even stiffer than him-
self. © His was the kind of dignity that grows from
reserve and stillness, from freezing every minute
like game which scents the hunter : while in total
contrast to him there sat his wife (the important
sefiota who had made so much of Edward), far
more impressive than her husband, but doing it
not by dignity but by that calculated abandon and
vulgarity which transcends dignity. Indeed, her
flinging about got the greater part of its effect
from the very formality of her setting. —
When the children arrived at the window she
must even have been discussing the size of her own
belly : for she suddenly seized the shy hand of the
mate, and made him, willy-nilly, feel it, as if to
clench an argument.
As for het husband, he did not seem to see her :
not did the servants: she was such a vety great
lady.
But it was not her, it was the meal which raped
José’s attention. It was certainly an impressive
one. Together on the table were tomato soup,
mountain mullet, cray-fish, a huge red-snapper,
land-crabs, rice and fried chicken, a young turkey,
a small joint of goat-mutton, a wild duck, beef
Steak, fried pork, a dish of wild pigeons, sweet
potatoes, yuca, wine, and guavas and cream.
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It was a meal which would take a long time.
Captain Jonsen and the lady appeared to be on
excellent terms : he pressing some project on her,
and she, without the least loss of amiability,
putting it on one side. What they were talking
about, of course, the children could not hear. As
a matter of fatt, it was themselves. Captain
Jonsen was trying to get the lady to discuss the
disposal of his impromptu nursery: the most
reasonable solution being plainly to leave them at
Santa Lucia, more or less in her charge. But she
was adept at eluding the importunate. It was not
till the banquet was over that he realised he had
failed to make any arrangement whatever.
But long before this, before the dinner was
ended and the dance began, the children were tired
of the peep-show. So José tiptoed away with
them, down to the back streets by the dock.
Presently they came to a mysterious door at the
bottom of a Staitcase, with a negro standing as if
on guard. But he made no effort to stop them,
and, José leading them, they climbed several
flights to a large upper room.
The air was one you could hardly push through,
The place was crowded with negroes, and a few
rather smudgy whites : among whom they recog-
nised most of the rest of the crew of the schooner.
At the far end was the most primitive stage you
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evet saw: there was a cradle on it, and a large
Stat swung on the end of a piece of String. There
was to be a nativity-play—tather early in the
season. While the Chief Magistrate entertained
the pitate captain and mate, the priest had got this
up in honour of the pirate crew.
A nativity play, with real cattle.
The whole audience had arrived an hour early,
so as to see the entry of the cow. ‘The children
were just in time for this.
The toom was in the upper part of a warehouse,
which had been built, through some freak of
vanity, in the English fashion, several stories high;
and was provided with the usual large door open-
ing onto nothingness, with a beam-and-tackle over
it. Many the load of gold-dust and arrowroot
which must have once been hoisted into it: now,
like most of the others at Santa Lucia, it had long
since ceased to be used.
But to-day a new rope had been rove through
the block : and a broad belly-band put round the
waist of the priest’s protesting old cow.
Margaret and Edward lingered timidly near the
top of the stairs ; but John, putting his head down
and burrowing like a mole, was not content till he
had reached the open doorway. ‘There he stood
looking out into the darkness: where he saw a
slowly revolving cow tteading the air a yard from
H * “FO
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
the sill, while at each revolution a negro reached
out to the utmost limit of balance, trying to catch
her by the tail and draw her to shore.
John, in his excitement, leaned out too far. He
lost his balance and fell clear to the ground, forty
feet, right on his head.
José gave a cry of alarm, sprang onto the cow’s
back, and was instantly lowered away—just as if
the cinema had already been invented. He must
have looked very comic. But what was going on
inside him the while it is difficult to know. Such
a responsibility does not often fall on an old sailor;
and he would probably feel it all the more for that
reason. As for the crowd beneath, they made no
attempt to touch the body till José had completed
his descent : they stood back and let him have a
good look at it, and shake it, and so on. But the
neck was quite plainly broken.
Margaret and Edward, however, had not any
cleat idea of what was going on, since they had
not a@tually seen John fall. So they were rather
annoyed when two of the schoonet’s ctew ap-
peared and insisted on their coming back to bed at
once. ‘They wanted to know where John was:
but even more they wanted to know where José
was, and why they weren’t to be allowed to Stay.
However they obeyed, in the impossibility of
asking questions, and started back to bed.
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Just as they were about to go on board the
schooner, they heard a huge report on their left,
like a cannon. They turned; and looking past
the quiet, silver town, with its palm-groves, to the
_ hills behind, they saw a large ball of fire, travelling
at a tremendous rate. It was quite close to the
ground : and not very far off either—just beyond
the Church. It left a wake of the most brilliant
blue, green, and purple blobs of light. For a
while it hovered: then it burst, and the air was
shortly charged with a strong sulphurous smell.
They wete all frightened, the sailors even mote
than the children, and hastened on board.
In the small hours, Edward suddenly called
Emily in his sleep. She woke up: ‘ What is it 2”
‘It’s rather cow-catching, isn’t it?’ he asked
anxiously, his eyes tight shut.
‘ What ’s the matter ?’
He did not answer, so she roused him—or
thought she had.
‘I only wanted to see if you were a real Cow-
catching Zomfanelia,’ he explained in a kind voice:
and was immediately deep asleep again.
In the morning they might easily have thought
the whole thing a dream—if John’s bed had not
been so puzzlingly empty.
Yet, as if by some mute flash of understanding,
III
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
no one commented on his absence. No one ques-
tioned Margaret, and she offered no information.
Neither then nor thereafter was his name ever
mentioned by anybody: and if you had known
the children intimately you would never have
guessed from them that he had ever existed.
iil
Thechildren’s only enemy on board the schooner
(which presently put to sea again, with them Still
on board) was the big white pig. (Thete was a
little black fellow, too.)
He was a pig with no decision of mind. He
could never choose a place to lie for himself ; but
was so teady to follow any one else’s opinion, that
whatever position you took up he immediately
recognised as the best, the only site: and came
and routed you out of it. Seeing how rare shady
patches of deck are in a calm, or dty patches in
a stiff breeze, this was a most infernal nuisance.
One is so defenceless against big pigs when lying
on one’s back.
The little black one could be a nuisance also, it
is true—but that was only from excess of friendli-
ness. He hated to be left out of any party: nay
more, he hated lying on inanimate matter if a
living couch was to be found. F
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On the north beach of Cape San Antonio it is
possible to land a boat, if you pick your spot.
About fifty yatds through. the bushes there are a
couple of acres of open gtound: cross this, and
among some sharp coral rocks in the scrub on the
far side ate two wells, the northernmost the better
of the two.
So, being becalmed off the Mangrove Keys
one morning, Jonsen sent a boat on shore to get
water.
The heat was extreme. The ropes hung like
dead snakes, the sails as heavy as ill-sculptured
drapery. The iron stanchion of the awning blis-
tered any hand that touched it. Whete the deck
was unsheltered, the pitch boiled out of the seams.
The children lay gasping together in the small
shade, the little black pig squealing anxiously till
he found a comfortable stomach to settle down on.
The big white pig had not found them yet.
From the silent shore came an occasional gun-
shot. ‘The watet-party were potting pigeons.
The sea was like a smooth pampas of quicksilver :
so steady you could not split shore from reflection,
till the casual collision of a pelican broke the
phantom. ‘The ctew wete mending sails, under
the awning, with infinite slowness : all except one
negro, who straddled the bowsprit in his trousers,
admiring his own grin in the mirror beneath.
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EEE
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
The sun lit an iridescent glimmer on his shouldets :
in sucha light even a negto could not be black.
Emily was missing John badly: but the little
black pig snuffed in supreme content, his snout
buried amicably in her armpit.
When the boatload returned, they had other
game besides pigeons and grey land-crabs. They
had stolen a goat from some lonely fisherman.
It was just as they came up over the side that the
big white pig discovered the party under the awn-
ing, and prepared for the attack. But the goat at
that moment bounded nimbly from the bulwarks :
and without even stopping to look round, swal-
lowed his chin and charged. He caught the old
pig full in the ribs, knocking his wind out com-
pletely.
Then the battle began. The goat charged, the
pig screamed and hustled. Each time the goat
atrived at him the pig yelled as if he was killed ;
but each time the goat drew back the pig advanced
towards him. The goat, his beard flying like a
ptophet’s, his eyes crimson and his scut as lively
as a lamb’s at the teat, bounded in, bounded back
into the bows for a fresh run: but at each charge
his run grew shorter and shorter. The pig was
hemming him in.
Suddenly the pig gave a frightful squeal, chiefly
in surprise at his own temerity, and pounced. He
114
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
had got the goat cornered against the windlass :
and for a few flashing seconds bit and trampled.
It was a very chastened goat which was pres-
ently led off to his quarters : but the children were
prepared to love him for ever, for the heroic bangs
he had given the old tyrant.
But he was not entirely inhuman, that pig.
That same afternoon, he was lying on the hatch
eating a banana. The ship’s monkey was swing-
ing ona loose tail of rope ; and spotting the prize,
swung further and further till at last he was able
to snatch it from between his very trotters. You
would never have thought that the immobile mask
of a pig could wear a look of such astonishment,
such dismay, such piteous injury.
115
——
Chapter 5
HEN Destiny knocks the first nail in
\ X / the coffin of a tyrant, it is seldom long
before she khocks the last.
It was the very next morning that the schooner,
in the lightest of airs, was sidling gently to lee-
watd. ‘The mate was at the wheel, shifting his
weight from foot to foot with that rhythmic
motion many steersmen affect, the better to get
the feel of a finicky helm ; and Edward was teach-
ing the captain’s terrier to beg, on the cabin-top.
The mate shouted to him to hang on to some-
thing.
‘Why?’ said Edward.
‘ Hang on!’ cried the mate again, spinning the
wheel over as fast as he could to bring her into
the wind.
The howling squall took her, through his
promptness, almost straight in the nose; or it
would have carried all away. Edward clung to
the skylight. The terrier skidded about alarm-
edly all over the cabin-top, slipped off onto the
deck, and was kicked by a dashing sailor clean
through the galley door. But not so that poor
big pig, who was taking an airing on deck at the
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
time. Ovetboard he went, and vanished to wind-
ward, his snout (sometimes) sticking up manfully
out of the water. God, Who had sent him the
goat and the monkey for a sign, now required his
soul of him. Overboard, too, went the coops
of fowls, three new-washed shirts, and—of all
Strange things to get washed away—the grind-
stone.
Up out of his cabin appeared the captain’s
shapeless brown head, cursing the mate as if it was
he who had upset the apple-cart. He came up
without his boots, in grey wool socks, and his
braces hanging down his back.
“Get below!’ muttered the mate furiously.
‘T can manage her ! ’
The captain did not, however : still in his socks,
he came up on deck and took the wheel out of the
mate’s hand. ‘The latter went a dull brick-ted :
walked for’ard: then aft again: then went below
and shut himself in his cabin.
In a few moments the wind had combed up
some quite heatty waves: then it blew their tops
off, and so flattened the sea out again, a sea that
was black except for little whipt-up fountains
of iridescent foam.
‘Get my boots!’ bellowed Jonsen at Ed-
ward.
Edward dashed down the companion with
117
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
alacrity. It is a great moment, one’s first order at
sea; especially when it comes in an emergency.
He reappeared with a boot in each hand, and a
lurch flung him boots and all at the captain’s feet.
* Never carry things in both hands,’ said the cap-
tain, smiling pleasantly.
‘Why ?’? asked Edward.
“Keep one hand to lay hold with.’
There was a pause.
“Some day I will teach you the three Sovereign
Rules of Life.’ He shook his head meditatively.
‘ They are very wise. But not yet. You are too
young.’
“Why not ?” asked Edward. ‘ When shall I be
old enough ?’”
The captain considered, going over the Rules
in his head.
“When you know which is windward and
which is leeward, then I will teach you the first
rule.’
Edward made his way forward, determined to
qualify as soon as he possibly could.
When the worst of the squall was over they got
the advantage of it, the schooner lying over
lissomly and spinning along like a race-hotse.
The crew were in great spirits—chafling the car-
penter, who, they declared, had thrown his grind-
Stone overboard as a lifebuoy for the pig.
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
The children were in good spirits also. Their
shyness was all gone now. ‘The schooner lying
over as she did, her wet deck made a most admit-
able toboggan-slide ; and for half an hour they
tobogganed happily on their bottoms from wind-
watd to leeward, shrieking with joy, fetching up
in the lee-scuppets, which were mostly awash, and
then climbing from thing to thing to the wind-
ward bulwarks raised high in the air, and so all
overt again.
Throughout that half hour, Jonsen at the wheel
said not a single word. But at last his pent-up
irritation broke out :
‘Hi! You! Stop that!’
They gazed at him in astonishment and dis-
illusion.
There is a period in the relations of children
with any new grown-up in charge of them, the
period between first acquaintance and the first re-
proof, which can only be compared to the prim-
ordial innocence of Eden. Once a reproof has
been administered, this can never be recovered
again.
Jonsen now had done it.
But he was not content with that—he was still
bursting with rage :
‘Stop it! Stop it, I tell you!”
(They had already done so, of course.)
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
The whole unreasonableness, the monstrous-
ness of the imposition of these brats on his ship
suddenly came over him, and summed itself up
in a single symbol :
“If you go and wear holes in your drawers, do
you think I am going to mend them ?—Lieber
Gott! What do you think Iam, eh? What do
you think.this ship is? What do you think we all
ate? ‘To mend your dtawers for you, eh? To
mend... your... drawers?”
There was a pause, while they all stood thunder-
struck,
But even now he had not finished :
* Where do you think you ’II get new ones, eh?’
he asked, in a voice explosive with rage. Then he
added, with an insulting coarseness of tone: ‘ And
I?ll not have you going about my ship without
phen! See? 7
Scarlet to the eyes with outrage they retreated
to the bows. ‘They could hardly believe so un-
speakable a remark had crossed human lips. ‘They
assumed an air of lightness, and talked together in
studied loud voices : but their joy was dashed for
the day.
So it was that—small as a man’s hand—a spectre
began to show over their horizon: the suspicion
at last that this was wot all according to plan, that
they might even not be wanted. Fora while their
I20
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
actions showed the unhappy watiness of the un-
invited guest.
Later in the afternoon, Jonsen, who had not
spoken again, but looked from time to time acutely
miserable, was still at the wheel. The mate had
shaved himself and put on shore clothes, as a
patable: he now appeared on deck: pretended
not to see the captain, but strolled like a passenger
up to the children and entered into conversation
with them.
“Tf I’m not fit to steer in foul weather, I ’m not
fit to steer in fair!’ he muttered, but without
glancing at the captain. ‘ He can take the helum
all day and night, for all the help I’Z give him !’
The captain appeared equally not to see the
mate. He looked quite ready to take both
watches till kingdom come.
“Tf he’d been at the wheel when that squall struck
us,’ said the mate under his voice but with biting
passion, ‘ he ’d have lost the ship! He ’s no more
eye for a squall coming than a sucker-fish! And
he knows it, too: that’s what makes him go on
this way |’
The children did not answer. It shocked them
deeply to have to see a grown-up, a should-be
Olympian, displaying his feelings. In exact op-
position to the witnesses at the Transfiguration,
they felt it would have been good for them to be
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
almost anywhere rather than there. He was totally
unconscious of their discomfort, however: too
self-occupied to notice how they avoided catching
his eye.
‘Look! There’s a steamship!’ exclaimed
Margaret, with much too bright a brightness.
The mate glowered at it.
‘ Aye, they’ll be the death of us, those steamets,’
he said. ‘Every year there’s more of them.
They ’Il be using them for men-of-war next, and
then where Il we be? Times are bad enough
without steamers.’
But while he spoke he wore a preoccupied ex-
pression, as if he wete more concerned with what
was going on at the back of his mind than with
what went on in the front.
‘ Did you ever hear about what happened when
the first steamer put to sea in the Gulf of Paria ?”
he asked, however.
‘No, what?’ asked Margaret, with an eager-
ness that even exceeded the necessities of polite-
ness in its falsity.
‘She was built on the Clyde, and sailed over.
(Nobody thought of using steam for a long ocean
voyage in those days.) ‘The Company thought
they ought to make a to-do—to pepularise her, so
to speak. So the first time she put to sea under
her own power, they invited all the big-wigs on
r2zZ
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
board : all the Members of Assembly in Trinidad,
and the Governor and his Staff, anda Bishop. It
was the Bishop what did the trick.’
His story died out: he became completely
absotbed in watching sidelong the effect of his
bravado on the captain.
“Did what 2?” asked Margaret.
‘Ran ’em aground.’
‘But what did they let him steer for?’ asked
Edward. ‘ They might have known he couldn’t !’
‘Edward! How date you talk about a Bishop
in that rude way!’ admonished Rachel.
‘It wasn’t the steamer he ran aground, sonny,’
said the mate: ‘ it was a poor innocent little devil
of a pitate craft, that was just beating up for the
Boca Grande in a northerly breeze.’
‘Good for him!’ said Edward. ‘How did
he do it ?’
‘ They were all sea-sick, being on a steamer for
the first time : the way she rolls, not like a decent
sailing-vessel. There wasn’t a man who could
Stay on deck—except the Bishop, and he just
thrived on it. So when the poor little pirate cut
under her bows, and seen her coming up in the eye
of the wind, no sail set, with a cloud of smoke
amidships and an old Bishop bung in the middle
of the smoke, and her paddles making as much
turmoil as a whale trying to scratch a flea in its ear,
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
he just beached his vessel and took to the woods.
Never went to sea again, he didn’t ; Started gtow-
ing coconuts. But there was one poor fish was
in such a hurry he broke his leg, and they came
ashore and found him. When he saw the Bishop
coming for him he started yelling out it was the
Devil.’ ,
‘O-oh!’ gasped Rachel, horror-struck.
‘ How silly of him,’ said Edward.
‘IT don’t know so much!’ said the mate. “He
wast’t too fat wrong! Ever since that, they ve
been the death of our profession, Steam and the
Church . . . what with steaming, and what with
‘preaching, and steaming and preaching. . . . Now
that ’s a funny thing,’ he broke off, suddenly inter-
ested by what he was saying: ‘Sveam and the
Church! What have they got in common, eh?
Nothing, you’d say: you’d think they ’d fight
each other cat-and-dog: but no: they ’re thick
as two thieves .. . thick as thieves.—Not like in
the days of Parson Audain.’
‘Who was he?’ asked Margaret helpfully.
‘He was a right sort of a parson, he was, ya myr
iawn! He was Reétor of Roseau—oh, a long
time back.’
‘Here! Come and take this wheel while I have
a spell!’ grunted the captain.
‘1 couldn’t well say Low long back,’ continued
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
the mate in a loud, unnatural, and now slightly
exultant voice: ‘ forty years or mote.’
He began to tell the story of the famous Rector
of Roseau: one of the finest pathetic preachers of
his age, according to contemporaries; whose
appeatance was fine, gentle, and venerable, and
who supplemented his stipend by owning a small
privateer.
“Here! Otto!’ called Jonsen.
But the mate had a long recital of the parson’s
misfortunes before him: beginning with the cap-
ture of his schooner (while smuggling negroes to
Guadaloupe) by another privateer, from Nevis ;
and how the parson went to Nevis, posted his
tival’s name on the court-house door, and stood
on guard there with loaded pistols for three days
in the hope the man would come and challenge
him.
“What, to fight a dve/?’ asked Harty.
* But wasn’t he a clergyman, you said P” asked
Emily.
But duels, it appeared, did not come amiss to
this priest. He fought thirteen altogether in his
life, the mate told them: and on one occasion,
while waiting for the seconds to reload, he went
up to his opponent, suggested ‘ just a little some-
thing to fill in time, good sir ’—and knocked him
. flat with his fist.
I 125
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
This time, however, his enemy lay low: so he
fitted out a second schooner, and took command
of her, week-days, himself. His first quarry was
an apparently harmless Spanish merchantman:
but she suddenly opened fourteen masked gun-
ports and it was he who had to surrender. All his
ctew were massacred but himself and his carpenter,
who hid behind a water-cask all night.
‘ But I don’t understand,’ said Margaret : “ was
he a pirate P’
‘Of course he was!’ said Otto the mate.
‘Then why did you say he was a clergyman ?’
pursued Emily.
The mate looked as puzzled as she did. * Well,
he was Re&tor of Roseau, wasn’t he? And B.A,,
B.D.? Anyway, he was Reétor until the new
Governor listened to some cock-and-bull story
against him, and made him resign. He was the
best preacher they ever had—he’d have been a
Bishop one day, if some one hadn’t slandered him
to the Governor !’
‘Otto!’ called the captain in a conciliatory
voice. ‘Come over here, I want to speak to you.’
But the deaf and exulting mate had plenty of his
Story still to run : how Audain now turned trader,
and took a cargo of corn to San Domingo, and
settled there: how he challenged two black
generals to a duel, and shot them both, and Chris-
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
tophe threatened to hang him if they died. But
the parson (having little faith in Domingan doctors)
escaped by night in an open boat and went to St.
Eustatius. There he found many religions but
no ministers ; so he recommenced clergyman of
evety kind: in the morning he celebrated a mass
for the Catholics, then a Lutheran service in
Dutch, then Church of England matins: in the
evening he sang hymns and preached hell-fite to
the Methodists. Meanwhile his wife, who had
more ttanquil tastes, lived at Bristol: so he now
mattied a Dutch widow, resoutcefully condudting
the ceremony himself.
‘But I don’t understand!’ said Emily despair-
ingly : ‘ Was he a teal clergyman ?’
‘ Of course he wasn’t,’ said Margaret.
‘But he couldn’t have married himself himself
if he wasn’t,’ atgued Edward. ‘Could he ?’
The mate heaved a sigh.
‘ But the English Church aren’t like that nowa-
days,’ he said. ‘ They ’re all against us.’
‘I should think not, indeed!’ pronounced
Rachel slowly, in a deep indignant voice. ‘ He
was a vety wicked man ! ’
‘ He was a most respectable person,’ replied the
mate severely, ‘ and a wonderful pathetic preacher !
—You may take it they were chagrined at Roseau,
when they heard St. Eustatius had got him! ’
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Captain Jonsen had lashed the wheel, and came
up, his face piteous with distress.
“Otto! “Mein Schatz...!’ he began, laying
his great bear’s-arm round the mate’s neck.
Without more ado they went below together, and
a sailor came aft unbidden and took the wheel.
Ten minutes later the mate reappeared on deck
for a moment, and sought out the children.
‘What ’s the captain been saying to you?’ he
asked. ‘Flashed out at you about something,
did he ?’
He took their complex, uncomfortable silence
for assent.
‘Don’t you take too much notice of what he
says, he went on. ‘ He flashes out like that some-
times ; but a minute after he could eat himself,
fair eat himself ! ’
The children stared at him in astonishment :
what on earth was he trying to say P
But he seemed to think he had explained his
mission fully: turned, and once mote went
below.
For hours a merry but rather tedious hubble-
bubble, suggesting liquor, was heard ascending
from the cabin skylight. As evening drew on,
the breeze having dropped away almost to a calm,
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
the steersman reported that both Jonsen and Otto
were now fast asleep, theit heads on each othet’s
shoulders across the cabin table. As he had long
forgotten what the course was, but had been
simply steering by the wind, and there was now no
wind to steer by, he (the steersman) concluded the
wheel could get on very well without him.
The reconciliation of the captain and the mate
deserved to be celebrated by all hands with a
blind.
A tum-cask was broached: and the common
sailots were soon as unconscious as their betters.
Altogether this was one of the unpleasantest
days the children had spent in their lives.
When dawn came, evety one was still pretty
. incapable, and the neglected vessel drooped un-
certainly. Jonsen, still rather unsteady on his
feet, his head aching and his mind Napoleonic but
muddled, came on deck and looked about him.
The sun had come up like a searchlight : but it
was about all there was to be seen. No land was
anywhere in sight, and the sea and sky seemed
vety uncertain as to the most becoming place to
locate their mutual firmament. It was not till he
had looked round and round a fair number of
times that he perceived a vessel, up in what by all
appearances must be sky, yet not very far distant.
For some little while he could not remember
129
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
what it is a pirate captain does when he sees a sail ;
and he felt in no mood to overtax his brain by
trying to. But after a time it came back unbidden
—one gives chase.
‘Give chase!’ he ordered solemnly to the
morning air: and then went below again and
roused the mate, who roused the crew.
No one-had the least idea where they were, or
what kind of a craft this quarry might be: but
such considerations were altogether too compli-
cated for the moment. As the sun parted further
from his refleGtion a breeze sprang up: so the
sails were trimmed after a fashion, and chase was
duly given.
In an hour or two, as the air grew clearer, it was
plain their quarry was a merchant brig, not too
heavily laden, and making a fair pace: a pace,
indeed, which in their incompetently trimmed
condition they were finding it pretty difficult to
equal. Jonsen shuffled rapidly up and down the
deck like a shuttle, passing his woof backwards
and forwatds through the real business of the
ship. He was hugging himself with excitement,
trying to evolve some crafty scheme of capture.
The chase went on: but noon passed, the dis-
tance between the two vessels was barely, if at all,
‘lessened. Jonsen, however, was much too opti-
mistic to realise this.
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
It used to be a common device of pirates when
in chase of a vessel to tow behind them a spare
topmast, or some other bulky obje&. This would
act as a drogue, or brake: and the pursued, seeing
them with all sail set apparently doing their utmost,
would under-estimate their powers of speed.
Then when night fell the pirate would haul the
spat on boatd, overtake the other vessel rapidly,
and catch it unprepared.
There were several reasons why this device
was unsuitable to the present occasion. First and
most obviously, it was doubtful whether, in their
present condition, they were capable of overtaking
the brig at all, leaving such handicaps altogether
out of consideration. A second was that the brig
showed no signs of alarm. She was proceeding
on her voyage at her natural pace, quite unaware
of the honour they were doing her. :
However, Captain Jonsen was nothing if not a
ctafty man; and during the afternoon he gave
otdets for a spare spar to be towed behind as I
have described. The result was that the schooner
lost ground rapidly: and when night fell they
wete at least a couple of miles further from the brig
than they had been at dawn. When night fell, of
coutse, they hauled the spar on board and pre-
pared for the last a&. They followed the brig by
compass through the hours of darkness, without
131
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
catching sight of her. When morning came, all
hands crowded expeétantly at the rail.
But the brig was vanished. The sea was as
bate as an egg.
If they were lost before, now they were double-
lost. Jonsen did not know where he might be
within two hundred miles ; and being no sextant-
man, but an incurable dead-reckoner, he had no
means of finding out. This did not worry him
vety greatly, however, because sooner or later one
of two things might happen: he might catch
sight of some bit of land he recognised, or he
might capture some vessel better informed than
himself. Meanwhile, since he had no particular
destination, one bit of sea was much the same to
him as another.
The piece he was wandering in, however, was
evidently out of the main track of shipping ; for
days went by, and weeks, without his coming even
so near to effecting a capture as he had been in the
case of the brig.
But Captain Jonsen was not sorry to be out of
the public eye for a while. Before he had left
Santa Lucia, news had reached him of the C/orinda
putting into Havana; and of the fantastic tale
Marpole was telling. The ‘twelve masked gun-
ports’ had amused him hugely, since he was
altogether without artillery: but when he heard
132
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Marpole accused him of murdering the children—
Marpole, that least reputable of skunks—his anger
had broken out in one of its sudden explosions.
For it was unthinkable—during those first few
days—that he would ever touch a hait of their
heads, ot even speak a cross word to them. They
were still a sort of holy novelty then: it was not
till their shyness had worn off that he had begun
to regtet so whole-heartedly the failure of his
attempt to leave them behind with the Chief
Magistrate’s wife.
F259
(Chapter 6
HE weeks passed in aimless wandering.
For the children, the lapse of time ac-
quired once mote the texture of a dream :
things ceased happening: every inch of the
schooner was now as familiar to them as the
Clorinda had been, ot Ferndale : they settled down
quietly to grow, as they had done at Ferndale, and
as they would have done, had there been time, on
the Clorinda.
And then an event did occur, to Emily, of con-
siderable importance. She suddenly realised who
she was.
There is little reason that one can see why it
should not have happened to her five years earlier,
ot even five later ; and none, why it should have
come that particular afternoon.
She had been playing houses in a nook right in
the bows, behind the windlass (on which she had
hung a devil’s-claw as a door-knocker) ; and tiring
of it was walking rather aimlessly aft, thinking
vaguely about some bees and a fairy queen, when
it suddenly flashed into her mind that she was she.
She stopped dead, and began looking over all of
her person which came within the range of eyes.
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She could not see much, except a fore-shortened
view of the front of her frock, and her hands
when she lifted them for inspection: but it was
enough for her to form a rough idea of the little
body she suddenly realised to be hers.
She began to laugh, rather mockingly. ‘Well!’
she thought, in effect: ‘ Fancy you, of all people,
going and getting caught like this !—You can’t
get out of it now, not for a very long time : you ’ll
have to go through with being a child, and grow-
ing up, and getting old, before you ’ll be quit of
this mad prank ! ’
Determined to avoid any interruption of this
highly important occasion, she began to climb the
ratlines, on her way to her favourite perch at the
mast-head. Each time she moved an arm or a leg
in this simple action, however, it struck her with
fresh amusement to find them obeying her so
readily. Memory told her, of course, that they
had always done so before: but before, she had
never tealised how surprising this was.
Once settled on her perch, she began examining
the skin of her hands with the utmost care: for it
was hers. She slipped a shoulder out of the top
of her frock; and having peeped in to make sure
she really was continuous under her clothes, she
shrugged it up to touch her cheek. The contact
of her face and the warm bare hollow of her
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shoulder gave her a comfortable thrill, as if it was
the caress of some kind friend. But whether the
feeling came to her through her cheek or her
shoulder, which was the caresser and which the
caressed, that no analysis could tell her.
Once fully convinced of this astonishing fact,
that she was now Emily Bas-Thornton (why she
inserted the ‘now’ she did not know, for she
cettainly imagined no transmigrational nonsense
of having been any one else before), she began
seriously to reckon its implications.
First, what agency had so ordered it that out of
all the people in the world who she might have
been, she was this particular one, this Emily : born
in such-and-such a year out of all the years in Time,
and encased in this particular rather pleasing little
casket of flesh ? Had she chosen herself, or had»
God done it ?
At this, another consideration : who was God ?
She had heard a terrible lot about Him, always:
but the question of His identity had been left vague, -
as much taken for granted as her own. Wasn’t
she perhaps God, herself? Was it that she was
trying to remember? However, the more she
tried, the more it eluded her. (How absurd, to
disremember such an important point as whether
one was God or not!) So she let it slide: per-
haps it would come back to her later.
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Secondly, why had all this not occurred to her
before? She had been alive for over ten years
now, and it had never once entered her head. She
felt like a man who suddenly remembers at eleven
o’clock at night, sitting in his own arm-chair, that
he had accepted an invitation to go out to dinner
that night. There is no reason for him to re-
membet it now: but there seems equally little
why he should not have remembered it in time to
keep his engagement. How could he have sat
there all the evening without being disturbed by
the slightest misgiving ? How could Emily have
gone on being Emily for ten years without once
noticing this apparently obvious fac ?
Tt must not be supposed that she argued it all out
in this ordered, but rather long-winded fashion.
Each consideration came to her in a momentary
flash, quite innocent of words: and in between
her mind lazed along, either thinking of nothing
or teturning to her bees and the fairy queen. If
one added up the total of her periods of conscious
thought, it would probably reach something be-
tween four and five seconds ; nearer five, perhaps ;
but it was spread out over the best part of an
hour.
Well then, granted she was Emily, what were
the consequences, besides enclosure in that par-
ticular little body (which now began on its own
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account to be aware of a sort of unlocated itch,
most probably somewhere on the right thigh), and
lodgment behind a particular pair of eyes P
It implied a whole series of circumstances. In
the first place, there was her family, a number of
brothers and sisters from whom, before, she had
never entitely dissociated herself; but now she
got such a sudden feeling of being a discrete
person that they seemed as separate from her as
the ship itself. However, willy-nilly she was
almost as tied to them as she was to her body.
And then there was this voyage, this ship, this
mast round which she had wound her legs. She
began to examine it with almost as vivid an illumi-
nation as she had studied the skin of her hands.
And when she came down from the mast, what
would she find at the bottom? There would be
Jonsen, and Otto, and the crew: the whole fabric
_ of a daily life which up to now she had accepted as
it came, but which now seemed vaguely disquiet-
ing. What was going to happen? Were there
disasters running about loose, disasters which her
tash matriage to the body of Emily Thornton
made her vulnerable to ?
A sudden terror struck her : did any one know ?
(Know, I mean, that she was some one in par-
ticular, Emily—perhaps even God—not just any
little girl.) She could not tell why, but the idea
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tertified her. It would be bad enough if they
should discover she was a particular person—but
if they should discover she was God! At all costs
she must hide that from them.—But suppose they
knew already, had simply been hiding it from her
(as guardians might from an infant king)? In
that case, as in the other, the only thing to do was
to continue to behave as if she did not know, and
so outwit them.
But if she was God, why not turn all the sailors
into white mice, or strike Margaret blind, or cure
somebody, or do some other Godlike a@ of the
kind? Why should she hide it? She never
teally asked herself why : but instin@ prompted
her strongly of the necessity. Of course, thete
was the element of doubt (suppose she had made
a mistake, and the miracle missed fire): but more
largely it was the feeling that she would be able to
deal with the situation so much better when she was
alittle older. Once she had declared herself there
would be no turning back ; it was much better to
keep her godhead up her sleeve for the present.
Grown-ups embark on a life of deception with
considerable misgiving, and generally fail. But
not so children. A child can hide the most appal-
ling secret without the least effort, and is prati-
cally secure against detection. Parents, finding
that they sce through their child in so many places
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the child does not know of, seldom realise that, if
there is some point the child really gives his mind
to hiding, their chances are nil.
So Emily had no misgivings when she deter-
mined to preserve her secret, and needed have none.
Down below on the deck the smaller children
were repeatedly crowding themselves into a huge
coil of rope, feigning sleep and then suddenly
leaping out with yelps of panic and dancing round
it in consternation and dismay. Emily watched
them with that impersonal attention one gives to
a kaleidoscope. Presently Harry spied her, and
gave a hail.
‘Emilee-ee! Come down and play House-on-
fire |?
At that, her normal interests momentarily te-
vived. Her stomach as it were leapt within her
sympathetically toward the game. But it died in
her as suddenly ; and not only died, but she did
not even feel disposed to waste her noble voice on
them. She continued to stare without making any
reply whatever.
‘Come on!’ shouted Edward.
‘Come and play!’ shouted Laura. ‘ Don’t be
a pig!’
Then in the ensuing stillness Rachel’s voice
floated up :
‘Don’t call her, Laura, we don’t really want her.’
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ii
But Emily was completely unaffected—only
glad that for the present they were all right by
themselves. She was already beginning to feel
the charge of the patty a burden.
It had automatically devolved on her with the
defection of Margaret.
It was puzzling, this Margaret business. She
could not understand it, and it disturbed her. It
dated back really to that night, about a week ago,
when she herself had so unaccountably bitten the
captain. The memory of her own extraordinary be-
haviour gave her now quite a little shiver of alarm.
Everybody had been very drunk that night, and
making a terrible racket—it was impossible to get
to sleep. So at last Edward had asked her to tell
them a story. But she was not feeling ‘storyable,’
so they had asked Margaret; all except Rachel,
who had begged Margaret not to, because she
wanted to think, she said. But Margaret had
been very pleased at being asked, and had begun
a vety stupid story about a princess who had lots
and lots of clothes and was always beating her
servant for making mistakes and shutting him up
ina dark cupboard. The whole story, really, had
been nothing but clothes and beating, and Rachel
had begged her to stop.
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In the middle, a sort of rabble of sailors had
come down the ladder, very slowly and with much
discussion. ‘They stood at the bottom in a knot,
swaying a little and all turned inwards on one of
their number. It was so dark one could not see
who this was. They were urging him to do
something—he hanging back.
‘Oh, damn it!’ he cried in a thick voice.
‘Bring me a light, I can’t see where dey are ! a
It was the voice of the captain—but how altered!
There was a sort of suppressed excitement in it.
Some one lit a lantern and held it up in the middle.
Captain Jonsen stood on his legs half like a big
sack of flour, half like a waiting tiger.
‘What do you want ?’ Emily had asked kindly.
But Captain Jonsen stood irresolute, shifting his
weight from foot to foot as if he was steering.
~ €You’re drunk, aren’t you?’ Rachel had
piped, loudly and disapprovingly.
But it was Margaret who had behaved most
queerly. She had gone yellow as cheese, and her
eyes large with terror. She was shivering from
head to foot as if she had the fever. It was absurd.
Then Emily remembered how stupidly frightened
Margaret had been the very first night on the
schooner.
At that moment Jonsen had staggered up to
Emily, and putting one hand under her chin had
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begun to stroke her hair with the other. A sort
of blind vertigo seized her: she caught his thumb
and bit as hard as she could : then, terrified at her
own madness, dashed across the hold to whete the
other children were gatheted in a wondering knot.
‘ What have you done!’ cried Laura, pushing
het away angrily : ‘Oh you wicked girl, you ’ve
hurt him ! ’
Jonsen was stamping about, sweating and suck-
ing his thumb. Edward had produced a hand-
kerchief, and between them all they had managed
to tie it up. He stood staring at the bandaged
member for a few moments: shook his head like
a wet tettiever and retreated on deck, dang-dang-
ing under his breath. Margaret had then been
so sick they thought she must teally have caught
fever, and they couldn’t get any sense out of het
at all.
As Emily, with her new-found consciousness,
tecapitulated the scene, it was like te-reading a
Story in a book, so little responsibility did she feel
for the merely mechanical creature who had bitten
the captain’s thumb. Nor was she even vety in-
terested: it had been queer, but then there was
very little in life which didn’t seem queer, now.
As for Jonsen, he and Emily had avoided each
other ever since, by mutual consent. She indeed
had been in Coventry with everybody for biting
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him ; none of the other children would play with
her all the next day, and she recognised that she
thoroughly deserved it—it was a mad thing to
have done. And yet Jonsen, in avoiding her, had
himself more the air of being ashamed than angry
. which was unaccountable.
But what interested her more was the curious
way Margaret had gone on, those next few
days.
For some time she had behaved very oddly in-
deed. At first she seemed exaggeratedly fright-
ened of all the men: but then she had suddenly
taken to following them about the deck like a dog
—not Jonsen, it is true, but Otto especially. Then
suddenly she had departed from them altogether
and taken up her quarters in the cabin. The
curious thing was that now she avoided them all
utterly, and spent all her time with the sailors :
and the sailors, for their part, seemed to take
peculiar pains not only not to let her speak to, but
even not to let her be seen by the other children.
Now they hardly saw her at all: and when they
did she seemed so different they hardly recognised
her : though where the difference lay it would be
hard to say.
Emily, from her perch at the mast-head, could
just see the girl’s head now, through the cabin
skylight. Further forward, José had joined the
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children at their game, and was crawling about on
hands and knees with all of them on his back—a
fite-engine, of course, such as they had seen in the
illustrated magazines from England.
“Emily !’ called Harry : ‘Come and play !’
Down with a rush fell the curtain on all Emily’s
cogitations. In a second she was once more a
happy little animal—any happy little animal. She
slid down the shrouds like a real sailor, and in no
time was directing the fire-fighting operations as
imperiously as any other of this brigade of super-
intendents.
itt
That night in the Parliament of Beds there was
raised at last a question which you may well be
surprised had not been raised before. Emily had
just reduced her family to silence by sheer ferocity,
when Harty’s rapid, nervous, lisping voice
piped up : .
“Emily Emily may I ask you a question,
please ??
“Go to sleep !’
There was a moment’s whispered confabulation.
‘But it’s very important, please, and we all
want to know.’
“What ?”
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‘ Are these people pirates ?’
Emily sat bolt upright with astonishment.
* Of course not ! ’
Harry sounded rather crestfallen.
‘I don’t know... just thought they might...’
‘But they are!’ declared Rachel firmly.
‘ Margaret told me! ’
‘Nonsense!’ said Emily. ‘ There aren’t any
pirates nowadays.’
‘Margaret said went on Rachel, ‘that time —
we were shut up on the other ship she heard one
of the sailors calling out pirates had come on
board.’
Emily had an inspiration.
‘No, you silly, he must have said pilots.’
‘ What are pilots ?’ asked Laura.
‘They Come On Boatd,’ explained Emily,
lamely. ‘ Don’t you remember that picture in the
dining-room at home, called The Pilot Comes On
Board ?’
Laura listened with rapt attention. The ex-
planation of what pilots were was not very illumi-
nating ; but then she did not know what pirates
were either. So you might think the whole dis-
cussion meant very little to her, but there you
would be wrong: the question was evidently
important to the older ones, therefore she gave
her whole mind to listening.
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The pirate heresy was considerably shaken.
How could they say for certain which word
Margaret had really heard? Rachel changed sides.
* They can’t be pirates,’ she said. ‘ Pirates are
wicked.’
“Couldn’t we ask them?’ Edward persisted.
Emily considered.
‘I don’t think it would be very polite.’
“I’m sure they wouldn’t mind,’ said Edward.
* They ’re awfully decent.’
‘I think they mightn’t like it,’ said Emily. In
her heart she was afraid of the answer ; and if they
wete pirates, it would here again be better to pre-
tend not to know.
‘I know!’ she said. ‘ Shall I ask the Mouse
with the Elastic Tail ? ’
“Yes, do!’ cried Laura. It was months since
the oracle had been consulted ; but her faith was
still perfect.
Emily communed with herself in a series of
short squeaks.
* He says they ate Pz/ots,’ she announced.
* Oh,” said Edward deeply : -and they all went
to sleep.
147
Chapter 7
DWARD often thought, as he strode scowl-
in up and down the deck by himself, that
this was exaétly the life for him, What a
lucky boy he was, to have tumbled into it by good
fortune, instead of having to run away to sea as
most other people did! In spite of the White
Mouse’s pronouncement (whom secretly he had
long ceased to believe in), he had no doubt that
this was a pirate vessel : and no doubt either that
when presently Jonsen was killed in some furious
battle the sailors would unanimously ele& him
their captain.
The girls were a great nuisance. A ship was
no place for them. When he was captain he
would have them marooned.
Yet there had been a time when he had wished
he was a girl himself. ‘ When I was young,’ he
once confided to the admiring Harry, ‘I used to
think gitls were bigger and stronger than boys.
Weren’t I silly ?’
‘Yes,’ said Harty.
Harty did not confide it to Edward, but he also,
now, wished he was a gitl. It was not for the same
reason: younger than Edward, he was still at the
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amorous age ; and because he found the company
of girls almost magically pleasing, fondly imagined
it would be even more so if he were one himself.
He was always finding himself, for being a boy,
shut out from their most secret councils. Emily
of course was too old to count as female in his
eyes: but to Rachel and Laura he was indis-
ctiminately devoted. When Edward was captain,
he would be mate: and when he imagined this
future, it consisted for the most part in rescuing
Rachel—or Laura, »’importe—from new and
complicated dangers.
They were all by now just as much at home on
the schooner as they had been in Jamaica. In-
deed, nothing very continuous was left of Fern-
dale for the youngest ones: only a number of
luminous pictures of quite unimportant incidents.
Emily of course remembered most things, and
could put them together. The death of Tabby,
fot instance: she would never forget that as long
as she lived. She could recolleé, too, that Fern-
dale had tumbled down flat. And her Earthquake:
she had been in an earthquake, and could remem-
ber every detail of that. Had it been as a result of
the earthquake that Ferndale had tumbled down ?
That sounded likely. There had been quite a high
wind at that time, too. . . . She could remember
that they had all been bathing when the earthquake
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had come, and then had ridden somewhere on
ponies. But they had been iz the house when it
fell down: she was pretty sure of that. It was
all a little difficult to join up.—Then, when was it
she had found that negro village? She could
remember with a startling clearness bending down
and feeling among the bamboo roots for the
bubbling. spring, then looking round and seeing
the black children scampering away up the clear-
ing. That must have been years and years ago.
But clearer than everything was that awful night
when Tabby had stalked up and down the room,
his eyes blazing and his fur twitching, his voice
melodious with tragedy, until those horrible black
shapes had flown in through the fanlight and
savaged him out into the bush. The horror of
the scene was even increased because it had once
of twice come back to her in dreams, and because
when she dreamt it (though it seemed the same)
there was always some frightful difference. One
night (and that was the worst of all) she had rushed
out to rescue him, when her darling faithful Tabby
had come up to her with the same horrible look
on his face the captain had worn that time she bit
his thumb, and had chased her down avenues and
avenues and avenues and avenues of cabbage-
palms, with Exeter House at the end of them never
getting any nearer however much she tan. She
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knew, of coutse, it was not the teal Tabby, but a
sort of diabolic double: and Margaret had sat up
an orange tree jeeting at her, gone as black as a
negro.
One of the drawbacks of life at sea was the cock-
toaches. ‘They were winged. They infested the
fore-hold, and the smell they made was horrible.
One had to put up with them. But one didn’t do
much washing at sea: and it was a common thing
to wake up in the morning and find the brutes had
gnawed the quick from under one’s nails, of
gnawed all the hard skin off the soles of one’s feet,
so that one could hardly walk. Anything in the
least greasy or dirty they set on at once. Button-
holes were their especial delight. - One did little
washing : fresh water was too valuable, and salt
_ water had practically no effe&. From handling
tatry ropes and greasy ironwork their hands would
have disgraced a slum-child. There is a sailor
saying which includes a peck of dirt in the
matiner’s monthly rations: but the children on
the schooner must have often consumed far
mote.
Not that it was a dirty ship—the fo’c’sle prob-
ably was, but the Nordicism of captain and mate
kept the rest looking clean enough. But even the
cleanest-looking ship is seldom clean to the touch.
Their clothes José washed occasionally with his
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own shirt : and in that climate they were dry again
by the morning.
Jamaica had faded into the past: England, to
which they had supposed they were going, and of
which a very curious picture had formerly been
built up in their minds by their parents’ constant
references to it, receded again into the mists of
myth. They lived in the present, adapted them-
selves to it, and might have been born in a ham-
mock and christened at a binnacle before they had
been there many weeks. They seemed to have no
natural fear of heights, and the farther they were
above the deck, the happier. On a calm day
Edward used to hang by his knees from the cross-
trees in order to feel the blood run into his head.
The flying-jib, too, which was usually down, made
an admirable cocoon for hide-and-seek : one took
a firm grip of the hanks and robands, and swathed
oneself in the canvas. Once, suspecting Edward
was hidden there, instead of going out on the
jib-boom to look, the other children cast off the
down-haul and then all together gave a great tug
at the halyard which nearly pitched him into the
sea. The shark myth is greatly exaggerated: it
is untrue, for instance, that they can take a leg
clean off at the hip—their bite is a tearing one, not
a clean cut: anda practised bather can keep them
off easily with a welt on the nose each time they
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turn overt to strike 1: but all the same, once ovet-
board there would have been little hope for a
small boy like Edward: and a severe wigging
they all got for their prank.
Often several of those thick, rubber-like pro-
tuberances would follow the vessel for hours—
perhaps in the hope of just some such antic.
Sharks were not without their uses, however :
it is well known that Catch a Shark Catch a Breeze,
so when a breeze was needed the sailors baited a
big hook and presently hauled one on board with
the winch. The bigger he was, the better breeze
was hoped for : and his tail was nailed to the jib-
boom. One day they got a great whacking fellow
on board, and having cut off his jaw some one
heaved it into the ship’s latrine (which no one was
so lubberly as to use for its proper purpose) and
thought no mote about it. One wildish night,
however, old José did go there, and sat full on that
wicked cheval de frie. He yelled like a madman:
and the crew were better pleased than they had
been with any joke that year, and even Emily
thought if only it had been less improper how
funny it would have been. It would certainly have
puzzled an archzologist, faced with José’s mummy,
to guess how he came by those curious scars.
1 The tiger-shark of the South Seas is of course a very different -
cattle.
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The ship’s monkey also added a lot to the ship’s
merriment. One day some sucker-fish had fixed
themselves firmly to the deck, and he undertook
to dislodge them. After a few preliminary tugs,
he braced three legs and his tail against the deck
and lunged like a madman. But they would not
budge. ‘The crew were standing round in a ring,
and he felt his honour was at stake: somehow,
they must be removed. So, disgusting though
they must have tasted to a vegetarian, he set to and
ate them, tight down to the sucker, and was loudly
applauded.
Edward and Harty often talked over how they
would distinguish themselves in the next engage-
ment. Sometimes they would rehearse it : storm
the galley with uncouth shouts, or spring into
the main rigging and order every one to be
thrown into the sea. Once, as they went into
battle,
“I am armed with a sword and a pistol!’
chanted Edward :
* And Iam armed witha key and half a whist-le!”
chanted the more literal Harry.
They took care to hold those reheatsals when
the real pirates were out of the way : it was not so
much that they feared the criticism of the pro-
fessional eye as that it was not yet openly recog-
nised what they were ; and all the children shared
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Emily’s instiné that it was better to pretend not to
know—a sort of magical belief, at bottom.
Although Laura and Rachel were thrown to-
gether a great deal, and were all one goddess to
Harty, their inner lives differed in almost every
respect. It was a matter of principle, as will have
been noticed, for them to disagree on every point :
but it was a matter of nature too. Rachel had
only two attivities. One was domestic. She was
never happy unless surrounded by the full patra-
phernalia of a household: she left houses and
families wherever she went. She colleéted bits of
oakum and the moultings of a worn-out mop,
wrapped them in tags and put them to sleep in
evety nook and cranny. Gwai, who woke one of
her twenty or thirty babies—worse still, should he
clear it away! She could even summon up
maternal feelings for a marline-spike, and would.
sit up aloft rocking it in her arms and crooning,
The sailors avoided walking underneath : for such
an infant, if dropped from a height, will find its
way through the thickest skull (an accident which
sometimes befalls unpopular captains),
Further, there was hardly an article of ship’s
use, from the windlass to the bosun’s chair, but
she had metamorphosed it into some sort of furni-
ture: a table or a bed or a lamp or a tea-set : and
matked it as her property: and what she had
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matked as her property no. one might touch—if
she could prevent it. ‘To parody Hobbes, she
claimed as her own whatever she had mixed her
imagination with; and the greater part of her
time was spent in angty or tearful assertions of
her property-rights.
Her other interest was moral. She had an
extraordinary vivid, simple sense, that child, of
Right and Wrong—it almost amounted to a pte-
cocious ethical genius. Every action, her own or
any one else’s, was immediately judged good or
bad, and uncompromisingly praised or blamed.
She was never in doubt.
To Emily, Conscience meant something very
different. She was still only half aware of that
secret criterion within her : but was terrified of it.
She had not Rachel’s clear divination : she never
knew when she might offend this inner harpy,
Conscience, unwittingly : and lived in terror of
those brazen claws, should she ever let it be
hatched from the egg. When she felt its latent
Strength stir in its pre-natal sleep, she forced her
mind to other things, and would not even let
herself recognise her fear of it. But she knew,
at the bottom of her heart she Anew, that one day
some action of hers would rouse it, something
awful done quite unwittingly would send it raging
round her soul like a whirlwind. She might go
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weeks together in a happy unconsciousness, she
might have flashes of vision when she knew she
was God Himself : but at the same time she knew,
beyond all doubt, in her innermost being, that she
was damned, that there never had been any one
as wicked as her since the world began.
Not so Rachel: to her, Conscience was by no
means so depressing an affair. It was simply a
comfortable mainspring of her life, smooth-work-
ing, as pleasant as a healthy appetite. For instance,
it was now tacitly admitted that all these men were
pirates. That is, they were wicked. It therefore
devolved on her to convert them : and she entered
on her plans for this without a shadow either of
misgiving or reluctance. Her conscience gave
her no pain because it never occurred to her as
conceivable that she should do anything but
follow its dictates, or fail to see them clearly. She
would try and convert these people first: prob-
ably they would reform, but if they did not—well,
she would send for the police. Since either result
was right, it mattered not at all which Circum-
Stance should call for.
So much for Rachel. The inside of Laura was
different indeed: something vast, complicated,
and nebulous that can hardly be put into language.
To take a metaphor from tadpoles, though legs
were growing her gills had not yet dropped off.
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Being nearly four years old, she was certainly a
child: and children are human (if one allows the
term ‘human’ a wide sense): but she had not
altogether ceased to be a baby: and babies of
course are not human—they are animals, and have
a vety ancient and ramified culture, as cats have,
and fishes, and even snakes: the same in kind as
these, but much more complicated and vivid, since
babies are, after all, one of the most developed |
species of the lower vertebrates.
In short, babies have minds which work in
terms and categories of their own which cannot be
translated into the terms and categories of the
human mind.
It is true they look human—but not so human,
to’ be quite fair, as many monkeys.
Subconsciously, too, every one recognises they
ate animals—why else do people always laugh’
when a baby does some aétion resembling the
human, as they would at a praying mantis? If
the baby was only a less-developed man, there
would be nothing funny in it, surely.
Possibly a case might be made out that children
are not human either: but I should not accept it.
Agreed that their minds are not just more ignorant
and stupider than ours, but differ in kind of think-
ing (ate mad, in faét) : but one can, by an effort of
will and imagination, think like a child, at least ina
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pattial degree—and even if one’s success is infini-
tesimal it invalidates the case: while one can no
mote think like a baby, in the smallest respect,
than one can think like a bee.
How then can one begin to describe the inside
of Laura, where the child-mind lived in the midst
of the familiar relics of the baby-mind, like a
Fascist in Rome ?
When swimming under water, it is a very sobet-
ing thing suddenly to look a large octopus in the
face. One never forgets it: one’s respect, yet
one’s feeling of the hopelessness of any teal in-
telle&ual sympathy. One is soon reduced to mere
physical admiration, like any silly painter, of the
cow-like tenderness of the eye, of the beautiful and
infinitesimal mobility of that large and toothless
mouth, which accepts as a matter of course that
" -vety water against which you, for yout life’s sake,
must be holding your breath. There he reposes
in a fold of rock, apparently weightless in the clear
green medium but very large, his long arms,
suppler than silk, coiled in repose, or Sstitring in
recognition of your presence. Far above, every-
thing is bounded by the surface of the air, like a
bright window of glass. Contac with a small
baby can conjure at least an echo of that feeling in
those who are not obscured by an uprush of
maternity to the brain.
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Of course it is not really so cut-and-dried as all
this; but often the only way of attempting to
express the truth is to build it up, like a card-house,
of a pack of lies.
It was only in Laura’s inner mind, however,
that these elaborate vestiges of babyhood te-
mained : outwardly she appeared fully a child—a
rather reserved, odd, and indeed rather captivating
one. Her face was not pretty, with its heavy eye-
brows and reduced chin : but she had a power of
apt movement, the appropriate attitude for every
occasion, that was most striking. A child who can
show het affection for you, for instance, in the very
way she plants her feet on the ground, has a liberal
gift of that bodily genius called charm. Ad€ually,
this particular one was a rare gesture with her:
nine-tenths of her life being spent in her own head,
she seldom had time to feel at all strongly either
for ot against people. The feelings she thus ex-
pressed were generally of a more impersonal kind,
and would have fascinated an admirer of the
ballet : and it was all the more remarkable that she
had developed a dog-like devotion to the reserved
and coarse-looking captain of the pirates.
No one really contends that children have any
insight into charaéter: their likings are mostly
imaginative, not intuitive. ‘ What do you think
I am?’ the exasperated ruffian had asked on a
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famous occasion. One might well ask what
Laura thought he was: and there is no means of
knowing.
il
Pigs grow quickly, quicker even than children :
and much though the latter altered in the first
month on board, the little black porker (whose
name by the by was Thunder) altered even mote.
He soon gtew to such a size one could not possibly
allow him to lie on one’s stomach any more: so,
as his friendliness did not diminish, the functions
were tevetsed, and it became a common thing to
find one child, or a whole bench of them, sitting on
his scaly side. ‘They grew very fond of him indeed
(especially Emily), and called him their Dear
Love, their Only Dear, their Own True Heart,
and other names. But he had only two things he
evet said. When his back was being scratched he
enunciated an occasional soft and happy grunt ;
and that same phrase (only in a different tone) had
to setve for every other occasion and emotion—
except one. When a patticularly heavy lot of
children sat down on him at once, he uttered the
faintest ghost of a little moan, as affecting as the
wind in a very distant chimney, as if the air in him
was being squeezed out through a pin-hole.
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One cannot wish for a more comfortable seat
than an acquiescent pig.
‘If I was the Queen,’ said Emily, ‘I should
most certainly have a pig for a throne.’
‘Perhaps she has,’ suggested Harry.
‘ He does like being scratched,’ she added pres-
ently in a very sentimental tone, as she rubbed his
scutfy back. |
The mate was watching :
‘TI should think you’d like being scratched, if
your skin was in that condition ! ”
‘Oh how discusring you ate!’ cried Emily,
delighted.
But the idea took root.
‘1 don’t think I should kiss him quite so much
if I was you,’ Emily presently advised Laura, who
was lying with her arms tight round his neck and
covering his briny snout with kisses from ring
to ears.
‘My pet! My love!’ murmured Laura, by
way of indirect protest.
The wily mate had foreseen that some estrange-
ment would be necessary if they were ever to
have fresh pork served without salt tears. He
intended this to be the thin end of the wedge.
But alas! Laura’s mind was as humoursome an_
instrument to play as the Iwenty-three-stringed
Lute.
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When dinnet-time came, the children mustered
for their soup and biscuit.
They wete not overfed on the schooner: they
were given little that is generally considered whole-
some, of to contain vitamines (unless these lurked
in the aforesaid peck of dirt): but they seemed
none the worse. First the cook boiled the various
non-perishable vegetables they carried in a big pot
together for a couple of hours. Then a lump
of salt beef from the cask forward, having been
rinsed in a little fresh water, was added, and
allowed to simmer with the rest till it was just
cooked. Then it was withdrawn, and the captain
and mate ate their soup first and their meat after-
wards, out of plates, like gentlemen. After that,
if it was a week-day, the meat was put to cool on
the cabin shelf, ready to warm up in to-morrow’s
soup, and the crew and children ate the liquor with
biscuit : but if it was Sunday, the captain took the
lump of meat and with a benevolent air cut it up
in small pieces, as if indeed for a nursery, and
mixed it up with the vegetables in the huge
wooden bow! out of which crew and children all
dipped. It was a very patriarchal way of feeding.
Even at dinner Margaret did not join the others,
but ate in the cabin ; though there were only two
‘plates on the whole ship. Probably she used the
mate’s when he had finished.
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Laura and Rachel fought that day to teats over
a particularly succulent piece of yam. Emily let
them. ‘To make those two agree was a task she
was wise not to undertake. Besides, she was very
busy over her own dinner. Edward managed to
silence them, however, by declaring in a most
terrible voice: ‘ Shut up or Ill saBrE you!’
Emily’s estrangement from the captain had
reached by now a rather uncomfortable stage.
When these things are fresh and new the two
parties avoid meeting, and all is well: but after
some days they ate apt to forget, find themselves
on the point of chatting, and then suddenly te-
member that they ate not on speaking terms and
have to retite in confusion. Nothing can be mote
uncomfortable forachild. The difficulty of effect-
ing a reconciliation in this case was that both
parties felt wholly in the wrong. Each repented
the impulse of a momentary insanity, and neither
had an inkling the other felt the same: thus each
waited for the other to show signs of forgiveness.
Moteover, while the captain had far the more
setious reason for being ashamed of himself,
Emily was naturally far the more sensitive and
concerned of the two: so it about balanced.
Thus, if Emily rushed blithely up to the captain
embracing a flying-fish, caught his eye and slunk
round the other side of the galley, he put it down
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to a permanent feeling of condemnation and te-
pulsion : blushed a deep purple and stared stonily
at his wrinkling mainsail—and Emily wondered if
he was never going to forget that bitten thumb.
But this afternoon things came to a head.
Laura was trotting about behind him, striking het
attitudes. Edward had at last discovered which
was windwatd and which was leeward, and had
come hot-foot to learn the first of the Sovereign
Rules of Life: and Emily, with one of her
wretched lapses of memory, was all agog at his
elbow.
Edward was duly catechised and passed.
‘Dis is the first rule,’ said the captain: “ Never
throw anything to windward except hot water or ashes.’
Edwartd’s face developed exactly the look of
bewilderment that was intended.
‘But windward is... he began: ‘I mean,
wouldn’t they blow . . .’ then he stopped, wonder-
ing if he had got the terms the right way round
after all. Jonsen was delighted at the success of
this ancient joke. Emily, trying to stand on one
leg, bewildered also, lost her balance and clutched
at Jonsen’s arm. He looked at her—they all
looked at her.
Much the best way of escaping from an em-
barrassing rencontre, when to walk away would be
an impossible strain on the netves, is to retire in a
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series of somersaults. Emily immediately started
turning head over heels up the deck.
It was very difficult to keep direction, and the
giddiness was appalling ; but she mas? keep it up
till she was out of sight, or die.
Just then, Rachel, who was up the mainmast,
dropped, for the first time, her marline-spike.
She uttered a terrible shriek—for what she saw was
a baby falling to dash its brains out on the deck,
Jonsen gave an ineffectual little grunt of alarm
—men can never learn to give a full-bodied scream
like a woman.
But Emily gave the most desperate yell of all,
though several seconds after the other two: for
the wicked steel stood quivering in the deck,
having gouged a track through her calf on the
way. Her wrought-up nerves and sickening
giddiness joined with the shock and pain to give
a heart-rending poignancy to her crying. Jonsen
was by her in a second, caught her up, and carried
her, sobbing miserably, down into the cabin.
There sat Margaret, bending over some mending,
her slim shoulders hunched up, humming softly
and feeling deadly ill.
“Get out!” said Jonsen, in a low, brutal voice.
Without a word or sign Margaret gathered up her
sewing and climbed on deck.
Jonsen smeared some Stockholm tar on a rag,
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and bound up Emily’s leg with more than a little
skill, though the tar of course was agonising to
her. She had cried herself right out by the time
he laid her in his bunk. When she opened her
Streaming eyes and saw him bending over her,
nothing in his clumsy face but concern and an
almost overpowering pity, she was so full of joy
at being at last forgiven that she reached up her
atms and kissed him. He sat down on the locker,
rocking himself backwards and forwards gently.
Emily dozed for a few minutes : when she woke
up he was still there.
‘ Tell me about when you were little,’ she said.
Jonsen sat on, silent, trying to project his un-
wieldy mind back into the past.
‘When I was a boy,’ he said at last, ‘ it wasn’t
thought lucky to grease your own sea-boots. My
Auntie used to grease mine before we went out
with the lugger.’
He paused for some time.
‘We divided the fish up into six shares—one
for the boat, and one for each of us.’
That was all. But it was of the greatest inter-
est to Emily, and she shortly fell asleep again,
supremely happy.
So for several days the captain and mate had to
shate the latter’s bunk, Box-and-Cox; Heaven
knows what hole Margaret was banished to. The
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gash in Emily’s leg was one which would take
some time to heal. To make things worse, the
weather became vety unsteady: when she was
awake she was all right, but if she fell asleep she
began to roll about the bunk, and then, of course,
the pain waked her again; which soon reduced
her to a feverish and nervous condition, although
the leg itself was going on as well as could be ex-
pected. The other children, of course, used to
come and see her : but they did not enjoy it much,
as there was nothing to do down in the cabin, once
the novelty of admittance to the Holy Place had
worn off. So their visits were perfunctory and
short. They must have had a high old time at
night, however, by themselves in the fore-hold,
now that the cat was away. They looked like it,
too, in the mornings.
Otto used sometimes to come and teach her to
make fancy knots, and at the same time pour out
his grievances against the captain: though these
latter were always received with an uncomfortable
silence. Otto was a Viennese by birth, but had
stowed away in a Danube barge when he was ten
years old, had taken to the sea, and thereafter
generally served in English ships. The only place
since his childhood where he had ever spent any
considerable time on shore was Wales. For some
years he had sailed coastwise from the once-
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promising harbour of Portdinlleyn, which is now
practically dead: and so, as well as German,
Spanish, and English, he could talk Welsh fluently.
- It was not a long residence, but at an impression-
able age ; and when he talked to Emily of his past
it was mostly of his life as a ‘ boy’ on the slate-
boats. Captain Jonsen came of a Danish family
settled on the Baltic coast, at Liibeck. He too had
spent most of his time on English ships. How or
when he and Otto had first met, or how they had
drifted into the Cuban piracy business, Emily
never discovered. They had plainly been in-
separable for many yeats. She preferred letting
them ramble on, to asking questions or trying to
fit things together : she had that sort of mind.
When the knots palled, José sent her a beautiful
ctochet-hook he had catved out of a beef bone:
and by pulling threads out of a piece of sail-cloth
she was able to set to work to crochet doilies for
the cabin table. But I am aftaid that she also
drew a lot, till the whole of the inside of the bunk
was soon as thoroughly scribbled over as a palao-
lithic cave. What the captain would say when he
found out was a consideration best postponed.
The fun was to find knots, and unevennesses in
the paint, that looked like something ; and then
with a pencil to make them look mote like it—put-
ting an eye in the walrus, or supplying the rabbit
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with his missing ear. That is what artists call
having a proper feeling for one’s material.
Instead of getting better the weather got worse :
and the universe soon became a very unstable place
indeed : it became almost impossible to crochet.
She had to cling on to the side of the bunk all the
time, to ptevent her leg getting banged.
It was ‘in this inconvenient weather, however,
that the pirates chose at last to make another cap-
ture. It turned out nota tich one : a small Dutch
Steamer, taking a consignment of performing
animals to one of Mr. Barnum’s predecessors.
The captain of the steamer, who was conceited in
a way that only certain Dutchmen can be con-
ceited, gave them a lot of trouble, in spite of the
fa& that he had practically nothing worth taking.
He was a first-class sailor: but he was very fair,
and had no neck. In the end they had to tie him
up, bring him on board the schooner, and lay him
on the eabiti floor where Emily could keep an eye
on him. He reeked of some particularly nauseous
brand of cigars that made her head swim.
The other children had played quite an import-
ant part in the capture. They did far better as a
badge of innocuousness than even the “ ladies.’
The steamer (little more than dressed-up sailing-
vessels they were then), thoroughly disgruntled at
the weather, was wallowing about like a porpoise,
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her decks awash and her funnel over one ear, so to
speak : so when a boat put out from the schooner,
its departure cheered lustily by Edward, Harry,
Rachel, and Laura, though his pride might resent
it, the Dutchman never thought of suspecting this
presumable offer of assistance, and let them come
on board.
It was then he began to give trouble, and they
had to remove him onto the schooner. Their
tempets wete none too good on finding their
booty was a lion, a tiger, two beats, and a lot of
monkeys : so it is quite likely they were none too
gentle with him in transit.
The next thing was to discover whether the
Thelma, like the Clorinda, carried another, a secret
cargo of greater value. They had imprisoned all
the crew, now, aft: so one by one they were
brought up on deck and questioned. But either
there was no money on board, ot the crew did not
know of it, ot would not tell. Most of them,
indeed, appeared frightened enough to have sold
their grandmothers: but some of them simply
laughed at the pirates’ bogey-bogey business,
guessing they drew the line at murder in cold
blood, sober.
What was done in each case was the same.
When each man was finished with he was sent
forward and shut in the fo’c’sle : and before bring-
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
ing another up from aft one of the pirates would
unmercifully belabour a roll of sail-cloth with a
cat-o’-nine-tails while another Yelled like the
damned. ‘Then a shot was fired in the air, and
something thrown overboard to make a splash.
All this, of course, was to impress those still down
in the cabin awaiting their turns : and the pretence
was quite as effective as the reality could have
been. But it did no good, since probably there
was no tteasure to disclose.
There was, however, a plentiful supply of
Dutch spirits and liqueurs on board: and these
the pirates found a welcome change after so much
West Indian rum.
After they had been drinking them for an hour
or two Otto had a brilliant idea. Why not give
the children a circus? They had begged and
begged to be taken onto the steamer to see the
animals. Well, why not stage something really
magnificent for them—a fight between the lion
and the tiger, for instance P
No sooner said than done. The children, and
every man who could be spared, came onto the
Steamer, and took up positions at safe heights in
the rigging. The cargo-gaff was rigged, the hatch
opened, and the two iron cages, with their stale
cat-like reek, were hauled up on deck. Then the
little Malay keepers, who kept twittering to each
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other in their windy tones, were made to open
them, that the’ two monarchs of the jungle might
come out and do battle.
How they wete to be got in again was a question
that never occurred to any one’s consideration.
Yet it is generally supposed to be easier to let
tigers out of cages than to put them back.
In this case, however, even when the cages were
open, neither of the beasts seemed very anxious
to get out. They lay on the floor growling (or
-gtoaning) slightly, but making no move except
to toll their eyes.
It was very unfortunate for poor Emily that she
was missing all this, laid by the leg in Jonsen’s
Stuffy cabin with the Dutch captain to guard.
When at first they had been left alone together
he had tried to speak to her: but unlike so many
Dutchmen he did not know a word of English.
He could just move his head, and he kept turning
his eyes first on a very sharp knife which some
idiot had dropped in a corner of the cabin floor,
then on Emily. He was asking her to get it for
him, of course.
But Emily was terrified of him. ‘There is some-
thing much more frightening about a man who is
tied up than a man who is not tied up—I suppose
it is the fear he may get loose.
The feeling of not being able to get out of
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the bunk and escape added the true nightmare
panic.
_ Remember that he had no neck, and the cigar-
reek,
At last he must have caught the look of fear and
disgust in her face, where he had expected com-
passion. He began to aé&t for himself. First
gently rocking his bound body from side to side,
he set himself to roll.
Emily screamed for help, beating with her fist
on the bunk: but none came. Even the sailors
who were left on board were out of ear-shot : they
were Straining all their attention to see what was
happening on the steamer that wallowed and
heaved seventy yatds away. ‘There, one of the
pirates, greatly daring, had descended to the tail
and begun throwing belaying-pins at the cages, to
rouse theit occupants. If the beasts so much as
lashed their tails in response, however, he would
scuttle up any rope like a frightened mouse. Only
the Malay keepers remained permanently on deck,
taking no notice: sitting on their heels in a ring
and crooning discordantly through their noses.
Probably they felt inside much as the lion and
tiger did.
After some minutes, however, the pirates grew
bolder. Otto came right up to one cage, and
Started poking the tiger’s ribs with a hand-spike.
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But the poor beast was fat too sea-sick to be roused
even by that. Gradually the whole crowd of the
spectators descended onto the deck and stood
round, still not unprepared to bolt, while the
drunk mate, and even Captain Jonsen (who was
perfectly sober), goaded and jeered.
It was not surprising no one heard poor Emily,
left alone in the cabin with the terrible Dutchman.
She screamed and screamed: but there was no
awakening from sh nightmare.
By now he had managed to roll himself, in spite
of the motion of the vessel, almost within reach of
the coveted knife. The veins on his forehead
Stood out with his exertion and the stricture of
his bonds. His fingers were groping, behind his
back, for the edge.
Emily, beside herself with terror, suddenly
became possessed by the strength of despair. In
spite of the agony it caused her leg she flung her-
self out of the bunk, and just managed to seize the
knife before he could manceuvre his bound hands
within reach of it.
In the course of the next five seconds she had
slashed and jabbed at him in a dozen places : then,
flinging the knife towards the door, somehow
managed to struggle back into the bunk.
The Dutchman, bleeding rapidly, blinded with
his own blood, lay still and groaned. Emily, her
ay)
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
own wound reopened, and overcome with pain
and terror, fainted. ‘The knife, flung wildly,
missed its aim and clattered down the steps again
onto the cabin floor: and the first witness of the
scene was Margaret, who presently peered down
from the deck above, her dulled eyes standing out
from her small, skull-like face.
As for Jonsen and Otto, unable by other means
to rouse the dormant animals, they collected their
men and with big levers managed to tilt the cages,
spilling the beasts out onto the deck.
But not even so would they fight—or even
show signs of resentment. As they had lain and
groaned in theit cages, so they now lay and
groaned on the deck.
They were small specimens of their kind, and
emaciated by travel. Otto with a sudden oath
seized the tiger round its middle and hauled it
upright on its hind legs : Jonsen did the same by
the mote top-heavy lion: and so the two princi-
pals to the duel faced each other, their heads
lolling over the arms of their seconds.
But in the eyes of the tiger a slight ember of
consciousness seemed to smouldet. Suddenly it
tautened its muscles: a slight effort, yet it burst
from the merely human grip of Otto like Samson
from the new ropes—nearly dislocated his' arms
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
before he had time to let go. Quicker than eye
could see, it had cuffed him, rending half his face.
Tigers ate no plaything. Jonsen dropped the
huge bulk of the lion on top of it, and escaped
with Otto through an open door: while the
pitates, tumbling over each other like people in
a burning theatre, struggled to get back in the
rigging,
The lion rolled clear. The tiger, lurching un-
steadily, crept back into its cage. The keening
Malays took no notice of the whole scene.
And yet, what a scene it had been !
But now the heroic circus was over. Chast-
ened, bruised by each other in their panic, the
drunken pirates helped the mate into the first of
the two boats, and pulling helter-skelter in the
choppy sea, returned to the schooner. One by
one they climbed the rail and vaulted on deck.
Sailors have keen noses. ‘They smelt blood at
once, and crowded round the companion-way :
where Margaret still sat, as if numb, on the top
Step.
Emily lay in the bunk below, her eyes shut—
conscious again, but her eyes shut.
The Dutch captain they could see on the floor,
Stretched in a pool of blood. ‘ But, Gentlemen, I
have a wife and children!’ he suddenly said in
Dutch, in a surprised and gentle tone: then died,
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not so much of any mortal wound as of the num-
ber of superficial gashes he had received.
It was plainly Margaret who had done it—
killed a bound, defenceless man, for no reason at
all; and now sat watching him die, with her dull,
meaningless stare.
178
Chapter 8
HE contempt they already felt for Mar-
| garet, their complete lack of pity in her
obvious illness and misery, had been in
direét proportion to the childhood she had belied.
This crime would have seemed to them grave
on the part of a grown man, in its unrelieved
wantonness : but done by one of her years, and
nurture, it was unspeakable. She was lifted by
the atms from the stair where she Still sat, and
without a moment’s hesitation (other than that
resulting from too many helping hands) was
dropped into the sea.
But yet the expression of her face, as—like the
_ big white pig in the squall—she vanished to wind-
ward, left a picture in Otto’s mind he never forgot.
She was, after all, his affair.
The Dutchman’s body was fetched up on deck.
Captain Jonsen went below: and once bent over
poor little Emily. She only screwed up her eyes
tighter, when she felt his hot breath on her face.
She did not open them till everybody had quite
gone—and shut them again when presently José
came to swab the cabin floor.
The second boat, bringing back the rest of the
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
crew and the four children, almost ran into Mat-
garet before they saw her. She was swimming
desperately, but in complete silence : her hair now
plastered across her eyes and mouth, now floating
out on the water as her head went under. They
lifted her into the boat and set her in the stern-
sheets with the other children. So it was they
found themselves together again.
In her sopping condition, the others naturally
gave her elbow-room: but still, she was among
them. They sat and’stared at her, their eyes very
wide and serious, but without speaking. Mar-
egaret, her teeth chattering with exhaustion, tried
ineffeCtually to wring out the hem of her frock.
She did not speak either: but nevertheless it was
not long before both she and the other children
felt a sort of thaw setting in between them. |
As to the oarsmen, they never troubled their
heads as to how she came in the water. ‘They
supposed she had accidentally slipped over the
side: but were not particularly interested, especi-
ally as they had their work cut out manceuyring
round to the schoonet’s lee and clambering on
board. ‘There was a tremendous pow-wow going
on aft, so that no one noticed them arrive.
Once on board, Margaret went straight forward
as of old, climbed down the ladder into the fore-
hold and undressed, the other children watching
180
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
her evety movement with an unfeigned interest.
Then she rolled herself in a blanket, and lay
down.
They none of them noticed quite how it hap-
pened : but in less than half an hour they were all
five absorbed in a game of Consequences. Pres-
ently one of the crew came, peered down the hatch
and then shouted ‘ Yes!’ to the rest, and then
went away again. But they neither saw nor
heard him.
From now on, however, the atmosphere of the
schooner suffered a change. A murder is inclined
to have this effe&@ on a small community. Asa
matter of faét, the Dutch captain’s was the first
blood to be shed on board, in the course of busi-
ness at any rate (I will not answer for private
quarrels). The way it had been shed left the
pitates profoundly shocked, their eyes opened to
a depravity of human nature they had not dreamt
of : but also it gave them an uncomfortable feeling
round the neck. So long as there was only the
citcus-prank to avenge, no American man-of-wat
was likely to be despatched in theit pursuit : high
Naval Authorities shrink naturally from any con-
tact with the ridiculous : but suppose the steamer
put into port, and announced the forcible abduc-
tion of her captain? Or worse, suppose her
mate, with an accursed spy-glass, had seen that
181
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA.
captain’s bloody body take its last dive? Pursuit
would be only too likely.
The plea ‘ It was none of us men did this wicked
deed, but one of our young female prisoners,’ was
hardly one which could be submitted to a jury.
Captain Jonsen had discovered from the steamet’s
log where he was: so he put the schooner about,
and set a course for his refuge at Santa Lucia. It
was unlikely, he thought, now, that any British
man-of-war would still be cruising about the scene
of the C/orinda episode—they had too much to do :
and he had reasons (fairly expensive ones) for not
anticipating any molestation from the Spanish
authorities. He did not like going home with
an empty ship, of course: but that appeared
inevitable.
The outward sign of this change in the atmo-
sphere of the schooner was a spontaneous increase
in the stri€tness of discipline. Nota drop of rum
was drunk. Watch was kept with the regularity
of a line-of-battle ship. The schooner became
tidier, more seamanlike in every way.
Thunder was slain and eaten the next day,
without any regard for the feelings of his lovers:
indeed, all tenderness towards the children van-
ished, Even José ceased playing with them.
They were treated with a detached severity not
wholly divorced from fear—as if these unfortunate
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
men at last realised what diabolic yeast had been
introduced into their lump.
So sensible were the children themselves of the
change that they even forgot to moutn for
Thunder—excepting Laura, whose face burned
an angry ted for half a day.
But the ship’s monkey, on the other hand, with
no pig now to tease, neatly died of ennui.
il
The reopening of the wound in her leg made
it several days mote before Emily was fit to be
moved from the cabin. During this time she was
much alone. Jonsen and Otto seldom came
below, and when they did were too preoccupied
to heed her blandishing. She sang, and conversed
to herself, almost incessantly ; only interrupting
herself to beseech these two, with a superfluity of
endeatments, to pick up her crochet-hook, to look
at the animal she had built out of her blanket, to
tell her a story, to tell her what naughty things
they did when they were little—how unlike Emily
it was, all this gross bidding for attention! But
as a tule they went away again, or went to sleep,
without taking the least notice of her.
As well, she told herself, o herself, endless
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Stories: as many as there are in The Arabian
Nights, and quite as involved. But the strings of
wotds she used to utter aloud had nothing to do
with this: I mean, that when she made a sort of
nattative noise (which was often), she did it for
the noise’s sake : the silent, private formation of
sentences and scenes, in one’s head, is fat ptefer-
able for real story-telling. If you had been
watching her then, unseen, you could only have
told she was doing it by the dramatic expressions
of her face, and her restless flexing and tossing—
and if she had had the slightest inkling you were
there, the audible rigmatole would have started
again. (No one who has private thoughts going
on loudly in his own head is quite sure of their not
being overheard unless he is providing something
else to occupy foreign ears.)
When she sang, however, it was always word-
less : an endless succession of notes, like a bird’s,
fixed to the first vocable handy, and practically
without tune. Not being musical, there was
never any reason for her to stop: so one song
would often go on for half an hour.
Although José had scrubbed the cabin floor as
well as he could, a large stain still remained.
At times she let her mind wander about, quite
peacefully, in her memories of Jamaica: a period
which now seemed to her very remote, a golden
184
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
age. How young she must have been! When
her imagination grew tired, too, she could recall
the Anansi stories Old Sam had told her : and they
often proved the point of departure for new ones
of her own.
Also she could remember the creepy things he
had told her about duppies. How they used to
tease the negroes about the supposed duppy at
the bathing-hole, the duppy of the drowned man!
It gave one an enormous sense of power, that—
not to believe in duppies.
But she found herself taking much less pleasure
in duppies now than she used.
She even once caught herself wondering what
the Dutchman’s duppy would look like, all bloody,
with its head turned backwards on its shoulders
and clanking a-chain ... it was a momentary flash,
the way the banished image of Tabby had come
back to het. For a moment her head reeled: in
another she was far from Jamaica, far from the
schooner, far from duppies, on a golden throne
in the remotest East.
The other children were no longer allowed in
the cabin to visit her: but when she heard their
feet scampering ovethead, she often conversed
with them in loud yells. One of these yells from
above told her :
‘ Marghie ’s back, you know.’
185
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
* O-oh.’
After that Emily was silent for a bit, her beauti-
ful, innocent grey eyes fixed on the ear of a dwarf
at the end of her bunk. Only the slight pucker
at the top of her nose showed with what intensity
she was thinking: and the minute drops of sweat
on her temples.
But it was not only when there was some out-
ward occasion, like this, that she suffered acute
distress. |
Froth as she might, those times of conscious-
ness, which had begun with a moment of such
sublime vision, were both growing on her and
losing their lustre. They were become sinister.
Life threatened to be no longer an incessant, auto-
matic discharge of enetgy : more and more often,
and when least expected, all that would suddenly
drop from her, and she would remember that she
was Emily, who had killed . . . and who was ere
.. and that Heaven alone knew what was going
to happen to the incompetent little thing, by what
miracle she was going to keep her end up... .
Whenever this happened, her stomach seemed to
drop away within her a hundred and fifty feet.
She, like Laura, had one foot each side of a
threshold now. As a piece of Nature, she was
practically invulnerable. But as Emily, she was
absolutely naked, tender. It was particularly cruel
186 -
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
that this transition should come when so fierce a
blast was blowing.
For mark this: any one in bed, with a blanket
up to her chin, is ina measure safe. She might go
through abysms of terror ; but once these passed,
no ptactical harm had been done. But once she
was up and about? Suppose it was at some
ctisis, some call to action, that her Time came
on her? What appalling blunder could she fail
to make P
Oh why must she grow up? Why, for pity’s
sake ?
Quite apart from these attacks of blind, secret
panic, she had other times of an ordinary, very
tational anxiety. She was ten and a half now.
What sort of future lay before her, what career P
(Theit mother had implanted in them young, as a
matter of principle, girls and boys alike, the idea
that they would one day have to earn theit own
livings.) I say she was ten and a half: but it
seemed such ages since she had come on the
schooner that she thought she was probably older
even than that.—Now this life was full of interest :
but was it, she asked herself, a really useful educa-
tion? What did it fitherfor? Plainly, it taught
her nothing but to be a sort of pirate too (what sort
of a pirate, being a girl, was a problem in itself).
But as time slipped by, it became clearer and
187
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
clearer that every other life would be impossible
for her—indeed, for all of them.
Gone, alas, was any shred of confidence that she
was God. ‘That particular, supreme cateet was
closed to her. But the conviétion that she was the
wickedest person who had ever been born, this
would not die for much longer. Some appalling
Power had determined it: it was no good Sstrug-
gling against it. Had she not already committed
the most awful of crimes . . . the most awful of
crimes, though, that was not murder, that was the
mysterious crime against the Holy Ghost, which
dwarfed even murder... had she, unwittingly, at
some time committed this too? She so easily
might have, since she did not know what it was.
And if that were so, no wonder the pity of Heaven
was sealed against her !
So the poor little outcast lay shivering and
sweating under her blanket, her gentle eyes fixed
on the eat of the dwarf she had drawn,
But presently she was singing again happily, and
hanging right out of the bunk to outline in pencil
the brown stain on the floor. A touch here, a
touch there, and it was an old market-woman to
the life, hobbling along with a bundle on her
back! I admit that it staggered even Otto a bit
when he came in later and saw what she had done.
But when again she lay still on her back, and
188
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
contemplated the practical difficulties of the life
ahead of her (even leaving God and her Soul and
all that on one side), she had not the support of
Edwatd’s happy optimism: she was old enough to
know how helpless she really was. How should
she, dependent now for her very life on the kind-
ness of those around her, how should she ever
acquire the wit and strength to struggle against
them and their kind ?
She had developed by this time a rather curious
feeling about Jonsen and Otto. In the first place,
she had become very fond of them. Children, it
is true, have a way of becoming more or less
attached to any one they ate in close conta with :
but it was more than that, deeper. She was far
fonder of them than she had ever been of her
parents, for instance. ‘They, for their part, showed
evety mild sign consonant with their natures of
being fond of her: but how could she kvow? It
would be so easy for adult things like them to dis-
semble to her, she felt. Suppose they really in-
tended to kill her: they could so easily hide it :
they would behave with exactly this same kindness
. I suppose this was the reflection of her own
instin@ for secretiveness ?
When she heard the captain’s step on the
Stairs, it might be that he was bringing her a
plate of soup, or it might be that he had come to
N 189
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
kill het—suddenly, with no warning change of
expression on his amiable face even at the very
end.
If that was his intention, there was nothing what-
ever she could do to hinder him. ‘To scream,
Struggle, attempt flight—they would be absolutely
useless, and—well, a breach of decorum. If he
chose to keep up appearances, it behoved her to do
so too. Ifhe showed no sign of his intention, she
must show no sign of her inkling of it,
That was why, when either of them came below,
she would sing on, smile at him impishly and con-
fidently, actually plague him for notice.
She was a little fonder of Jonsen than of Otto.
Ordinarily, any coarseness or malformity of adult
flesh is in the highest degree repulsive to a child :
but the cracks and scars on Jonsen’s enormous
hands were as interesting to her as the valleys on
the moon to a boy with a telescope. As he
clumsily handled his parallel rulers and dividers,
fitting them with infinite care to the marks on his
chart, Emily would lie on her side and explore
them, give them all names.
Why must she gtow up? Why couldn’t she
leave her life always in other people’s keeping, to
order as if it was no concern of hers ?
Most children have something of this feeling.
With most children it is outweighed: Still, they
190
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
will generally hesitate before telling you they
prefer to gtow up. But then, most children live
secute lives, and have an at least apparently secure
futute to grow upto. To have already murdered
a full-sized man, and to have to keep it for ever
sectet, is not a normal background for a child of
ten: to have a Margaret one could not altogether
banish from one’s thoughts : to see every ordinary
avenue of life locked against one, only a violent
toad, leading to Hell, open.
She was still on the border-line : so often Child
still, and nothing but Child . . . it needed little con-
juting ... Anansi and the Blackbird, Genies and
golden thrones. . ..
Which is all a rather groping attempt to ex-
plain a curious fa&: that Emily appeared—indeed
was tathet young for her age: and that this was
due to, not in spite of, the adventures she had
been through.
But this youngness, it burnt with an intenser
flame. She had never yelled so loud at Ferndale,
for sheer pleasute in her own voice, as now she
yelled in the schooner’s cabin, -carolling like a
larget, fiercer lark.
Neither Jonsen nor Otto were netvous men :
but the din she made sometimes drove them almost
distracted. It was very little use telling her to
shut up: she only remembered for such a short
191
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
time. Ina minute she was whispering, in two she
was talking, in five her voice was in full blast.
Jonsen was himself a man who seldom spoke to
any one. His companionship with Otto, though
devoted, was a singularly silent one. But when
he did speak, he hated not to be able to make him-
self heard at all: even when, as was usual, it was
himself he was talking to.
iit
Otto was at the wheel (there was hardly one of
the crew fit to steer). His lively mind was occu-
pied with Santa Lucia, and his young lady there.
Jonsen slipper-sloppered up and down his side of
the deck.
Presently, his interest in his subje€t waning,
Otto’s eye was caught by the ship’s monkey, which
was spotting on its back on the cabin skylight.
That animal, with the same ingenious adapt-
ability to circumstance which has produced the
human tace, had now solved the playmate question.
As a gambler will play left hand against right, so
he fought back legs against front. His extra-
ordinary lissomness made the dissociation most
lifelike: he might not have been joined at the
waist at all, for all the jun@tion discommoded him,
192
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
The battle, if good-tempered on both sides, was
quite a serious one : now, while his hind feet were
doing their best to pick out his eyes, his sharp
little teeth closed viciously on his own private
parts.
From below the skylight, too, came teats and
cries for help that one might easily have taken for
real if they had not been occasionally interrupted
by such phrases as ‘It’s no good: I shall cut off
your head just the same!”
Captain Jonsen was thinking about a little house
in fat-off, shadowy Liibeck—with a china stove
_.. it didn’t do to talk about retiring : above all,
one must never say aloud ‘ This is my last voyage,’
- even addressing oneself. The sea has an ironic
way of interpreting it in her own fashion, if you
do. Jonsen had seen too many skippers sail on
their ‘ last voyage "—and never return.
He felt acutely melancholy, not very far from
tears: and presently he went below. He wanted
to be alone.
Emily by now was conduéting, in her head, a
secret conversation with John. She had never
done so before: but to-day he had suddenly pre-
sented himself to her imagination. Of course his
disappearance was strictly taboo between them :
what they chiefly discussed was the building of
a magnificent raft, to use in the bathing-hole
ag?
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
at Ferndale; just as if they had never left the
place.
When she heard the captain’s step, so nearly
sutptising her at it, she blushed a deep red. She
felt her cheeks still hot when he arrived. As usual,
he did not even glance at her. He plumped down
on a seat, put his elbows on the cabin table, his
head in his hands, and tocked it rhythmically
from side to side.
“Look, Captain!’ she insisted. ‘Do I look
ptetty like this? Look! Look! Look, d I
look pretty like this ?
For once he raised his head, turned, and con-
sidered her at length. She had tolled up her
eyes till only the whites showed, and turned her
under lip inside out. With her first finger she
was squashing her nose almost level with her
cheeks.
“No,” he said simply, ‘ you do not.’ Then he
returned to his cogitation.
She stuck out her tongue as well, and wageled it.
‘Look!’ she went on, ‘ Look!’
But instead of looking at her, he let his eye |
wander round the cabin. It seemed changed
somehow—emasculated : a little girl’s bedroom,
not a man’s cabin. The actual physical changes
were tiny: but-to a meticulous man they glared.
The whole place smelt of children.
194
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Unable to contain himself, he crammed on his
cap and burst up the stairs.
On deck, the others were romping round the
binnacle, wildly excited.
‘Damn!’ cried Jonsen at the sight of them,
Stamping in an ungovernable rage.
Of course his slippers came off, and one of them
skiddered up the deck.
What devil entered into Edward I do not know:
but the sight was too much for him. He seized
the slipper and rushed off with it, shrieking with
delight. Jonsen roared at him: he passed it to
Laura, and was soon dancing up and down at the
end of the jib-boom. Edward, of all people!
The timid, respectful Edward !
Laura could hardly carry the enormous thing :
but she clasped it tight in her arms, lowered het
~ head, and with the purposeful air of a rugger-
player tan back with it very fast up the deck,
appatently straight into Jonsen’s atms. At the
last moment she dodged him neatly: continued
right on past Otto at the wheel, just as serious and
just as fast, and forward again on the port-side.
Jonsen, no quick mover at any time, Stood in his
socks and roated himself hoatse. Otto was shak-
ing with laughter like a jelly.
This mad intoxication, which had flashed from
child to child, now dropped a spark into the crew.
a
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
They were already peering excitedly from the
fo’c’sle hatch, grins struggling with outrage for
ptide of place: but at this point they broke into a
cheer. Then, like the devils in a pantomime, they
all sank together through the floor, aghast at them-
selves, and pulled the scuttle over their heads.
Laura, still hugging the slipper, caught her toe
in an eye-bolt and fell full length, set up a yell.
Otto, with a suddenly straight face, ran forward,
picked up the slipper and returned it to Jonsen,
who put iton. Edward stopped jumping up and
down and became frightened.
Jonsen was trembling with rage. He advanced
on Edward with an iron belaying-pin in his hand.
“Come down from there!’ he commanded.
“Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!’ cried Edward,
not moving. Harry suddenly ran and hid him-
self in the galley, though he had had no part
in it.
With a surprising agility which he rarely used,
Jonsen started out along the bowsprit towards
Edward, who did nothing but moan ‘ Don’t!” at
the sight of that murderous belaying-pin. When
Jonsen was just on him, however, he swatmed up
a Stay, helping himself with the iron hanks of
the jib.
Jonsen returned to the deck, wringing his hands
and angrier than ever. He sent a sailor to the
196
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
cross-ttees to head the boy off and drive him down
again.
Indeed, but for an extraordinary diversion, I
shudder to think what might have happened to
him. But just at this moment there appeared, up
the ladder from the children’s fore-hold, Rachel.
She wote one of the sailors’ shirts, back to front,
and reaching to her heels: in her hand, a book.
She was singing ‘ Onward, Christian Soldiers ° at
the top of her voice. But as soon as she reached
the deck she became silent: strutted straight aft,
looking neither to right nor left, genufleéted to
Otto at the wheel, and then sat herself down on a
wooden bucket.
Every one, Jonsen included, stood petrified.
After a moment of silent prayer she arose, and
commenced an inarticulate gabble-gabble which
reproduced extraordinarily well the sound of what
she used to hear in the little church at St. Anne’s,
where the whole family went one Sunday in each
month.
Rachel’s religious revival had begun. It could
hardly have been more opportune : who shall say
it was not Heaven which had chosen the moment
for her P
Otto, entering into the thing at once, rolled up
his eyes and spread out his arms, cross-wise,
against the wheel-house at his back.
ADT.
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Jonsen, rapidly recovering some of his temper,
Strode up to her. Her imitation was admirable.
For a few moments he listened in silence. He
wavered: should he laugh? Then what tre-
mained of his temper prevailed.
‘Rachel!’ he rebuked.
She continued, almost without taking breath,
‘ Gabble-gabble, Bretheren, gabble-gabble.’
‘Iam not a religious man myself,’ said the cap-
tain, ‘ but I will not allow religion to be made a
mock of on my ship!’
He caught hold of Rachel.
“ Gabble-gabble! ’ she went on, slightly faster
and ona higher note. ‘Let mealone! Gabble-
gabble! Amen! Gabble.. .’
But he sat himself on the bucket, and stretched
her over his knee.
“You ’re a wicked pirate! Youll go to
Hell!’ she shrieked, breaking at last into thé
articulate.
Then he began to smack her; so hard that
she screamed almost as much with pain as with
rage. ;
When at last he set her down, her face was swollen
and purple. She directed a tornado of punches
with her little fists against his knees, crying ‘ Hell !
Hell! Hell!’ in a strangulated voice.
He flipped her fists aside with his hand, and
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
presently she went away, so tited with crying she
could hardly get her breath.
Meanwhile, Laura’s behaviour had been chat-
acteristic. When she tripped and fell, she roared
till her bumps ceased hurting. Then, with no
petceptible transition, her convulsions of agony
became an attempt to stand onherhead. ‘This she
kept up throughout Edward’s flight up the stay,
throughout the ecle€tric appearance of Rachel.
During the latter’s punishment, having happened
to topple in the dire@tion of the mainmast, and
finding her feet against the rack round its base for
belaying the halyards to, she gave a tremendous
shove off—she would roll instead. And roll she
did, very tapidly, till she arrived at the captain’s
feet. ‘There she lay all the while he was smacking
Rachel, completely unconcerned, on her back, her
knees drawn up to her chin, humming a little tune.
iv
When Emily returned to the fore-hold, her first
aét was one which greatly complicated life. As if
there was not sea enough already outside the ship,
she decreed that practically all the deck was sea
also. ‘The main-hatch was an island, of course ;
atid there were others—chiefly natural excrescences
ee
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
of the same kind. But all the rest, all the open
deck, could only be safely crossed in a boat, or
swimming.
As to who was in a boat and who wasn’t, Emily
decided that herself. No one ever knew till she
had been asked. But Laura, once she had got the
main idea into her head, always swam, whether
said to be in a boat or not—to be on the safe side.
“ Isn’t she silly P’ said Edward once, when she
refused to stop working her arms although they
had all told her she was safe on board.
“I expect we were all as silly as that when we
wete young,’ said Harry.
It was a source of consternation to the children
that none of the grown-ups would recognise this
‘sea.’ The sailors trod carelessly on the deepest
oceans, tefusing so much as to paddle with their
hands. But it was equally irritating to the sailors
when the children, either safe on an island or bear-
ing down in a vessel of their own, would scream
at them in a tone of complete conviction :
“You’re drowning! You’re drowning!
O-o-oh, look out! You ’re out of your depth
there! The sharks ’ll eat you!’
‘O-oh look! Miguel’s sinking! The waves
are right over his head !’
That happens to be the one sort of joke sailors
can’t enjoy. Even though the words were un-
200
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
intelligible, their gist—eked out by the slightly
malicious hints of the mate—was not. If they
Steadily refused to swim, they at least took to
crossing themselves fervently and continuously
whenever they had to traverse a piece of open
deck. For there was no way one could be certain
that these brats were not gifted with second sight
—bijos de putas !
What the children were really doing, of course,
was trying out what it would feel like when they
themselves were all grown pirates, running a joint
venture or each with a craft of his own: and
though they never so much as mentioned piracy in
the course of these public navigations, they talked
their heads off about it at night now.
Matgaret also refused to swim: but they knew
by now it was no good trying to make her: no
good yelling at her she was drowning, for all she
did at that word was to sit down and cry. So it
became a recognised convention that Margaret,
wherever she went or whatever she was doing,
was on a taft, with a keg of biscuit and a barrel of
water, by herself—and could be ignored.
For, since her return, she had become very dull
company. ‘That one game of Consequences had
been a flash in the pan. For several days after it
she had remained in bed, hardly speaking, and
inclined to tear strips off her blanket when she was
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
asleep: andeven when she was about again, though
perfectly amiable—more amiable than before—she
refused to join in any game whatever. She seemed
happy: but for any imaginative purpose she was
useless.
Moteover, she made no attempt to regain the
sovereignty to which Emily had succeeded. She
nevet ordered any one about. ‘There was not
even any fun to be got out of baiting her: nothing
seemed to ruffle her temper. She was sometimes
treated with a good-humoured contempt, some-
times ignored altogether : and it was enough for
her to say something for it to be automatically
voted silly.
Rachel also, for several days after her service,
showed no disposition to join with the others.
She preferred to sit about below, sulking, in the
hold. From time to time she attempted to pick
a hole, with a copper nail she had got hold of,
in the bottom of the ship, and so sink it. It was
Laura who discovered her purpose, and came
hot-foot to Emily with the news. Laura never
doubted, any more than Rachel did, that the task
was a possible one.
Emily came below and found her at it. After
three days, she had only managed to scratch up
one single splinter—partly because she never
attacked the same place twice: but both she and
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Lauta expected to see quantities of water come
welling through and rapidly fill the ship. In-
deed, though no water had yet appeared, Laura
was convinced the ship was already perceptibly
lowered as a result of Rachel’s efforts.
Laura clasped her hands in expectation, waiting
to see what Emily would do in the face of this
impending disaster.
‘You stupid, ¢hat’s no good!” was all Emily’s
comment.
Rachel looked at her angrily :
“You leave me alone! I know what I am
doing ! ’
Emily’s eyes gtew very wide, and danced with
a Strange light.
“Tf you talk to me like that, Ill have you
hanged from the yard-arm ! ’
‘What ’s that?” asked Rachel sulkily.
‘You ought to know which 'is the yard-arm by
now |’
‘I don’t cate!’ gtowled Rachel, and went on
scratching with her nail.
Emily picked up a big piece of iron, in a cornet,
so heavy she could hardly carry it :
“Do you know what I’m going to do?’ she
asked in a strange voice.
At the sound of it Rachel stopped scratching
and looked up.
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“ No,’ she said, a trifle uneasily.
‘I’m going to kill you! I’m turned a pirate,
and I’m going to kill you with this sword !’
At the word ‘ sword,’ the misshapen lump of
metal seemed to Rachel to flicker toasharp, wicked
point.
She looked Emily in the eyes, doubtfully. Did
she mean it, or was it a game P
As a matter of fact, she had always been a little
afraid of Emily. Emily was so huge, so strong,
so old (as good as grown up), so cunning! Emily
was the cleverest, the most powerful person in the
world! The muscles of a giant, the ancient ex-
perience of a serpent !—And now, her terrible
eyes, with no hint in them of pretence.
Emily glared fixedly, and saw real panic dawn in
Rachel’s face. Suddenly the latter turned, and as
fast as her short fat legs would carry her began to
swarm up the ladder. Emily rang her iron once
against it, and Rachel nearly tumbled down again
in her haste.
The iron was so big and heavy it took Emily a
long time to haul it up on deck. Even when that
was done, it greatly impeded her running, so that
she and Rachel did three laps round the deck with-
out their distances altering much, cheered boister-
ously by Edward. Even in her terror Rachel did
not forget to work her arms as in breast-Stroke.
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Finally, with a cry of ‘Oh, I can’t run any more,
my bad leg ’s hurting!’ Emily flung down the
iron and dropped panting beside Edward on the
main-hatch.
‘I shall put poison in your dinner!’ she
shouted cheerfully to Rachel: but the latter re-
treated behind the windlass and began to nutse
with an abandoned devotion the particular brood
she had parked there, working herself almost to
tears with the depth of her maternal pity for them.
Emily went on chuckling for some time at the
memory of her spott.
© What ’s the matter with you ?” asked Edward
scornfully, puffing out his chest. He was feeling
particularly manly at the moment. “Have you
got the giggles ?’
‘I “ke having the giggles,’ said Emily disarm-
ingly. ‘Let’ssee if we can’t all get them. Come
on, Laura! Harty, come!’
The two smaller ones came obediently. They
Stared her in the face attentively and seriously,
awaiting the Coming of the God, while she herself
broke into louder and louder explosions of
laughter. Soon the infection took and they were
laughing too, each shriller and more wildly than
the other.
‘I can’t stop! I can’t stop!’ they cried at
intervals.
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“Come on, Edwatd! Look me in the face! ’
“IT won’t!’ said Edward.
So she set on him and tickled him till he was
as hysterical as the rest.
‘Oh, I do want to stop, my tummy is hurting
so!’ complained Harry at last.
“Go away then,’ advised Emily in a lucid in-
terval. And so the group presently broke up.
But they had all to avoid each other’s eye for a
long while, if they were not to risk another attack.
It was Laura who was cured the quickest. She
suddenly discovered what a beautiful deep cave
her arm-pit made, and decided to keep fairies in it
in future. For some time she could think of
nothing else.
Vv
Captain Jonsen called suddenly to José to take
the wheel, and went below for his telescope.
Then, buttressing his hip against the rail, and ex-
tending the shade over the objeét-glass, he stared
fixedly at something almost in the eye of the setting
sun. Emily, in a gentle mood, wandered up to
him, and stood, her side just touching him. Then
she began lightly rubbing her cheek on his coat,
as a cat does.
Jonsen lowered the glass and tried his naked
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eye, as if he had more trust in it. Then he ex-
plored with the glass once more.
What was that business-like-looking sail, tall
and narrow as a pillar? He swept his eye round
the rest of the horizon: it was empty: only that
single threatening finger, pointing upwards.
Jonsen had chosen his course with cate to avoid
all the ordinary tracks of shipping at that time of
year. Especially he had chosen it to avoid the
routine-passages of the Jamaica Squadron from
one British island to another. This—it had no
business here : no mote than he had himself.
Emily put her arm round his waist and gave it a
slight hug.
‘ What is it?’ she said. ‘ Do let me look.’
Jonsen said nothing, continuing to stare with
concentration.
‘ Dolet melook!’ said Emily. ‘I haven’t ever
looked through a telescope, ever ! ’
Jonsen abruptly snapped the glass to, and looked
down at her. His usually expressionless features
were Stirred from their roots. He lifted one hand
and gently began to stroke her hair.
‘Do you love me?’ he asked.
‘Mm,’ assented Emily. Later she added, with
a wtigele, “ You ’re a darling.’
‘If it was to help me, would you do something
... very difficuit ?’
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“Yes, but do let me have a look through your
telescope, because I haven’t, not ever, and I do
so want to!’
Jonsen gave a weary sigh, and sat down on the
cabin-top. What om Earth were children’s heads
made of, inside P
‘ Now listen,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you
seriously.’
‘Yes,’ said Emily, trying to hide her extreme
discomfort. Her eye plaintively searched the deck
for something to hold it. He pressed her against
his knee in an attempt to win her attention.
‘If bad, cruel men came and wanted to kill me
and take you away, what would you do P’
‘Oh, how horrid!’ said Emily. ‘ Will they ?’
‘Not if you help me.’ }
It was unbearable. With a sudden leap she was
astride his knees, her arms round his neck and her
hands pressing the back of his head.
‘T wonder if you make a good Cyclops ?” she
said ; and holding his head firmly laid her nose to
his nose, her forehead to his forehead, both staring
into each othet’s eyes, an inch apart, till each saw
the other’s face grow narrow and two eyes con-
verge to one large, misty eye in the middle.
‘Lovely!’ said Emily. ‘ You ’re just right for
one! Only now one of your eyes has got loose
and is floating up above the other one ! ’
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The sun touched the sea, and for thirty seconds
every detail of the distant man-of-wat was outlined
in black against the flame. But, for the life of
him, Jonsen could think of nothing but that house
in quiet Liibeck, with the green porcelain stove.
« 209
Chapter 9
[oe darkness closed down with its sudden
curtain on that minatory finger.
Captain Jonsen remained on deck all
night, whether it was his watch or not. It was a
hot night, even for those latitudes : and no moon.
The suffused brilliance of the stars lit up every-
thing close quite plainly, but showed nothing in
the distance. The black masts towered up, clear
against the jewelry, which seemed to swing slowly
a little to one side, a little to the other, of their
tapering points. The sails, the shadows in their
curves all diffused away, seemed flat. The hal-
yatds and topping-lifts and braces showed here,
wete invisible there, with an arbitrariness which
took from them all meaning as mechanism.
Looking forwatd with the glowing binnacle-
light at one’s back, the narrow milky deck sloped
up to the fore-shortened tilt of the bowsprit, which
seemed to be trying to point at a single enlarged
Star just above the horizon.
The schooner moved just enough for the sea to
divide witha slight rustle on her stem, breaking out
into a shower of sparks, which lit up also wherever
the water rubbed the ship’s side, as if the ocean
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wereatissue of sensitive nerves; and still twinkled
behind in the mete paleness of the wake. Only a
faint tang of tar in the nostrils was there to remind
one that this was no ivory and ebony fantasia but
a machine. For a schooner is in fact one of the
most mechanically satisfactory, austere, unorna-
mented engines ever invented by Man.
A few yards off, a shoal of luminous fish shone
at different depths.
But a few hundred yards off, one could see
nothing! ‘The sea became a steady glittering
black that did not seem to move. Neat, one
could see so much detail it seemed impossible to
believe that there a whole ship might lie invisible :
impossible to believe that by no glass, no anxious
Straining of the eyes, could one ever see.
Jonsen strode up and down the lee-side of the
vessel, so that what breeze there was, collecting in
the hollow of the sails, overflowed down onto him
in a continuous cool cascade. From time to time
he climbed to the foremast-head, in spite of the
fa& that added height could not possibly give
added vision: stared into the blank till his eyes
ached, and then came down and resumed his
restless pacing. A ship with her lights out
might creep within a mile of him, and he not
know it.
Jonsen was not given to intuitions : but he had
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now an extraordinary feeling of certainty that
somewhere close in that cover of darkness his
enemy lay, preparing destruction for him. He
Strained his ears too: but he could hear nothing
either, except the rustle of the water, the occasional
knocking of a loose block.
If only there had been a moon! He remem-
bered another occasion, fifteen years before. The
slaver of which he was then second mate was
bowling along, the hatches down on her stinking
catgo, all canvas spread, when right across the
glittering path of the moon a frigate crossed,
almost within gun-shot—ctossed the light, and
disappeared again. Jonsen had realised at once
that though the frigate, with the light behind it,
was now invisible to them, they, with the moon-
light shining full on them, would be perfeétly
visible to the frigate. The boom of a gun soon
ptoved it. He had wanted to make a blind bolt
for it: but his captain, instead, ordered every
Stitch of sail to be furled : and so they lay all night
under their bare poles, not moving, of course, but
(with nothing to refle& the light) grown invisible
in their turn. When dawn came the frigate was
so far down the wind they had easily shown her a
clean pair of heels.
But to-night! There was no friendly moon-
track to betray the attacker: nothing but this
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inner conviction, which grew every moment more
certain.
Shortly after midnight he had descended from
one of his useless climbs to the mast-head, and
stood for a moment by the open fore-hatch. The
watm breath of the children was easily dis-
cernible. Margaret was chattering in her sleep—
quite loud, but you could not distinguish a single
clear word.
Moved by a whim, Jonsen climbed down the
laddet into the hold. Below, it was hot as an
oven. A zooming winged cockroach cannoned
about. ‘The sound of the water, a dry rustle
above, was here a pleasant gurgle and plop against
the wooden shell; most musical of sounds to a
sailor.
Laura lay on her back in the faint light of the
open hatch. She had discarded her blanket and
the vest which did duty for a night-gown was
tucked right up under her arms. Jonsen won-
dered how anything so like a frog could ever con-
ceivably grow into the billowy body of a woman.
He bent down and attempted to pull down the
vest: but at the first touch Laura rolled violently
ovet onto her stomach, then drew her knees up
under her, thrusting her pointed rump up at him ;
and continued to sleep in that position, breathing
noisily.
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As his eyes got used to the gloom, vague white
splodges showed him that most of the children
had discarded their dark blankets. But he did
not notice Emily, sitting up in the darkness and
watching him.
As he turned to go, an experimental smile lit up
his face: he bent, and gently flicked Laura’s be-
hind with his finger-nail. It collapsed like a burst
balloon ; but still she went on sleeping, flat on her
face now.
Jonsen was still chuckling to himself as he
teached the deck. But there his forebodings re-
turned to him with redoubled force. He could
feel that man-of-war lying-to in the darkness,
biding its time! For the fiftieth time he climbed
the ratlines and took his stand at the cross-trees,
skinning his eyes.
Presently, looking down, he could just discern
the small white figure on the deck which was
Emily, hopping and skipping about. But it
passed at once out of his mind.
Suddenly his tired eye caught a patch of some-
thing darker than the sea. He looked away, then
back again, to make sure. It was still there: on
the port bow: impossible to make out clearly,
though . . . Jonsen slid down the shrouds in a
flash, like a ptentice. Landing on the deck like a
thunderbolt, he nearly startled Emily out of her
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life: she had no idea he was up there. She
Startled him no less.
“It’s so hot down there,’ she began, ‘I can’t
sleep j
‘Get below!’ hissed Jonsen furiously : “ don’t
you dare come up again! And don’t let any of
the others, till I tell you!’
Emily, thoroughly frightened, tumbled down the
ladder as fast as she could, and rolled herself in her
blanket from head to foot: partly because her
bare legs were teally a little chilled, but more for
comfort. What had she done? What was hap-
pening? She was hardly down when feet were
heard scurtying across the deck, and the hatches
over her head wete loosely fitted into place. The
darkness was profound, and seemed to be rolling
onher. No one was within reach : and she dared
not move an inch. Every one was asleep.
Jonsen called all hands on deck: and in silence
they mustered at the rail. The patch was clearly
visible now: neater, and smaller than he had
thought at first. They listened for the splash of
oats: but it came on in silence.
Suddenly they were upon it, it was grating
against the ship’s side, slipping astern. It was a
dead tree, catried out to sea by some river in spate,
and tangled up with weed.
But after that, he kept all hands on deck till
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dawn. In their new mood they obeyed him
readily enough. For they knew he was not in-
competent. He generally did the right thing—it
was only the fuss he made in any emergency which
gave him the appearance of blundering.
Yet, though there were now so many eyes
watching, no further alarm was given.
But the moment the first paleness of dawn
glimmered, every one’s nerves tightened to crack-
ing-point. The rapidly increasing light would
any moment show them their fate.
It was not till full daylight, however, that
Jonsen would let himself be convinced there was
absolutely no man-of-war there.
As a matter of fad, its royals had sunk below
the horizon less than an hour after he had first
sighted it.
il
But the alarm of that night caused Jonsen at
last to make up his mind.
He altered his course: and as before he had
designed it to avoid other shipping, now on the
contrary it was calculated to run as soon as
possible into the very track of the Eastward
Bounders.
Otto rubbed his eyes. What had come over
the fellow? Did he want revenge for the fright
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he had had? Was he going to try and cut out a
prize right in the thick of the traffic ?_ It would be
like Jonsen, that: to put his head in the lion’s
mouth after trembling at its roar: and Otto’s
heatt warmed towatds him. But he asked no
questions.
Meanwhile Jonsen went to his cabin, opened a
sectet teceptacle in his bunk, and took out a job-
lot of ships’ papers which he had bought from a
Havana dealer in such things. The ‘ John Dodson,
of Liverpool, bound for the Seychelles with a cargo of
cast-iron pots—what use was that in these waters ?
The man had sold him a pup !—Ah, this was
better: ‘Lizzie Green,’ of Bristol, bound from Matanzas
to Philadelphia in ballast. ..a fanny trip to make in
ballast, true: but that was no one’s affair but his
_ imaginary ownet’s. Jonsen made sure all was in
otder—filled in the blank dates, and so on—then
returned the bundle to its hiding-place for another
occasion. Coming on deck, he gave a number of
ordets.
First, Stages were rigged over the bows and stern,
and José and a paint-pot went over the rail to add
Lizzie Green to the many names which from time
to time had decorated the schooner’s escutcheon.
Not content with that, he had it painted on every
other appropriate place—the boats, the buckets—
it was as well to be thorough. Meanwhile, many
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
of the sails were taken down and new ones bent—
ot rather, old ones, distin@ive sails that a man
would swear he couldn’t have forgotten if he had
evet seen them before. Otto sewed a large patch
to the mainsail, where there was no hole. In his
zeal Jonsen even considered lowering the yards
and rigging her as a pure fore-and-after: but
luckily for his sweating crew, abandoned the idea.
The master-stroke of his disguise was permanent
—that he carried no guns; Guns can be hidden
ot thrown overboard, it is true: but the grooves
they make in the deck cannot, as many a protesting-
innocent sea-tobber has found to his cost. Jonsen
not only had no guns to hide, he had no grooves:
any fool could see he had no guns, and never had
hadany. And who ever heard of a pirate without
guns? It was laughable: yet he had proved
again and again that one could make a capture just
as easily without them: and further, that the
captured merchantman, in making his report,
could generally be counted on to imagine a greater
ot less display of artillery. Whether it was to save
their faces, or pure conservatism—presumption
that there must have been guns—nearly every
vessel Jonsen had had dealings with had reported
masked artillery, manned by ‘fifty or seventy
rufhians of the worst Spanish type.’
Of course if he met and was challenged by a
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man-of-war, he would have to give in without a
fight. But then, it never pays to fight a man-of-
wat anyhow. If he is a big one, he sinks you. If
he is some little cock-shell of a cutter, commanded
by a fire-eating young officer just into his teens,
you sink him—and then there is the devil to pay.
Better be sunk outright than insult the honour of
a gteat nation in that fashion.
When he at last remembered to take the hatches
off the children, they were half dead with suffoca-
tion. It was hot enough, stuffy enough anyhow
down there, only the square opening above for
ventilation ; but with the hatches even loosely in
place it was a Black Hole. Emily had at last
dropped asleep, and slept late, through a chain of
nightmares: when she did wake in the closed
hold, she sat up, then fainted immediately, and
fell back, her breath coming in loud snotes.
Before she came to again she was already sobbing
miserably. At that the little ones began to cty
too: which sound it was that reminded Jonsen,
rather late, to take the hatches off.
He was quite alarmed when he saw them. It
was not till they had been out in the morging
_ freshness of the deck for some time that they even
summoned up interest in the strange metamor-
phosis of the schooner that was in progtess.
Jonsen looked at them with a troubled eye.
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They had not indeed the appearance of well-cared-
for children: though he had not noticed this
before. They were dirty to a fault: their clothes
torn, and mended, if at all, with twine. Their
hair was not only uncombed—there was tar in it.
They were mostly thin, and a yellowy-brown
colour. Only Rachel remained obstinately plump
and pink. ‘The scar on Emily’s leg was still a
blushing purple: and they all were blotched with
insect bites.
Jonsen called José off his painting job: gave
him a bucket of fresh water : the mate’s (the only)
comb: and a pair of scissors. José wondeted
innocently: they did not look to him particularly
dirty. But he did his duty, while they were still
too sorry for themselves to object actively, to do
anything more than sob weakly when he hurt
them. Even when he had finished their toilet, of
course, he had not reached the point at which a
nursemaid usually begins.
It was noon before the Lizyze Green looked het-
self—whoever that might be: and a little after
noon she was Still heading for ‘ Philadelphia ’
when, hull down on the horizon, two sail were
sighted, many miles apart, at about the same
minute. Captain Jonsen considered them care-
fully ; made his choice, and altered his course so
as to fall in with her as soon as might be.
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Meanwhile, the crew had no more doubt than
Otto had of Jonsen’s intention: and the sound of
the whetstone floated merrily aft, till each man’s
knife had an edge that did its master’s heart good.
I have said that the murder of the Dutch captain
had affected the whole character of their piracy.
The yeast was working.
Presently the smoke of a large steamer cropped
up over the horizon as well. Otto sniffed the
breeze. It might hold, or it might not. They
were still far from home, and these seas crowded.
The whole enterprise looked to him pretty
desperate.
Jonsen was at his usual shuffe-shufHe, nervously
biting his nails. Suddenly he turned on Otto and
~ called him below. He was plainly very agitated ;
his cheeks red, his eye wild. He began by plot-
ting himself meticulously on the chart. Then he
growled over his shoulder :
‘ Those children, they must go.’
“ Aye,’ said Otto. Then, as Jonsen said no
more, he added: ‘ You ’ll land them at Santa, I
take it ?’
‘No! They must go now. We may never
get to Santa.’
Otto took a deep breath.
Jonsen turned on him, blustering :
“Tf we get taken with them, where ’ll we be, eh ?’
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Otto went white, then red, before he answered.
‘You ’ll have to tisk that,’ he said slowly.
‘ Fou can’t land them no other place.’
‘Who said I was going to land them ?’
‘There ’s nothing else you can do,’ said Otto
stubbornly.
A light of comprehension dawned suddenly in
Jonsen’s worried face.
“We could sew them up in little bags,’ he said
with a genial smile, ‘and put them over the
side.’
Otto gave him one quick glance ; what he saw
was enough to relieve him.
‘What ate you going to do?’ he asked.
‘Sew them up in little bags! Sew them up in
little bags!’ Jonsen affirmed, rubbing his hands
together and chuckling, all the latent sentiment-
ality of the man getting the better of him. Then
he pushed past Otto and went on deck.
The big brigantine, which he had aimed for at
first, was proving a bit too far up the wind for
him: so now he took the “helm and let the
schoonet’s head down a couple of a to inter-
cept the Steamer instead.
Otto whistled. At last an inkling of what the
captain was at had dawned on him.
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
iii
As they drew nearer, the children were all im-
mensely interested: they had never before seen
anything like this big, miraculous tub. The
Dutch steamer, an old-fashioned craft, had not
differed very materially from a sailing-vessel : but
this, in form, was already more like the steamers
of out own day. Its funnel was still tall and
nattow, with a kind of artichoke on top, it is true :
but otherwise it was much the same as you and I
are used to.
Jonsen spoke her urgently: and presently her
engines stopped. The Lizzie Green slipped round
under her lee. Jonsen had a boat lowered: then
embarked in it himself. The children and the
schoonet’s ctew stood at the rail in tense excite-
ment: watched a little ladder lowered from her
toweting iron side : watched Jonsen, alone, in his
dark Sunday suit and the peaked cap of his rank,
climb on board. He had timed it nicely: in
another hour it would be dark.
He had no easy task. First he had his premedi-
tated fiction to establish, his explanation of how,he
came by his passengers. Secondly, he had to pet-
suade the captain of the steamship, a Stranger, to
relieve him, where he had so signally failed to
persuade his friend the sefiora at Santa Lucia.
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Otto was not a man to show agitation: but
he felt it, none the less. This scheme of Jon’s
was the foolhardiest thing he had ever heard of :
the slightest suspicion, and they were as good as
done for.
Jonsen had ordered him, if he guessed anything
was wrong, to run.
Meanwhile, the breeze was dropping, and it was
still light.
Jonsen had vanished into the steamer as into a
forest.
Emily was as excited as any of them, pointing
out the novel features of this extraordinary vessel.
The children still thought it was professional
quarry. Edward was openly bragging of what he
would do when he had captured it.
‘IT shall cut the captain’s head off and throw it in
the water!’ he declared aloud.
*S-s-sh !’ exclaimed Harry in a stage whisper.
“Coo! I don’t care!’ cried Edward, intoxi-
cated with bravado. ‘’Then I shall take out all the
gold and keep it for myself.’
‘T shall sink it!’ said Harry, in imitation : then
added as an afterthought, ‘Right to the very
bottom ! ’
Emily fell silent, her peculiarly vivid imagina-
tion having the mastery of her. She saw the hold
of the steamer, piled with gold and jewels. She
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saw herself, fighting her way through hordes of
haity sailors, with her bare fists, till only the
Steamet’s captain stood between her and the
treasure.
Then it happened! It was as if a small cold
voice inside her said suddenly, ‘ How can you?
You’re only a little girl!’ She felt herself falling
giddily from the heights, shrinking. Shewas Emily.
The awful, blood-covered face of the Dutch
captain seemed to threaten her out of the ait. She
coweted back at the shock. But it was over in a
moment.
She looked around her in terror. Did any one
know how defenceless she was? Surely some one
must have noticed her. ‘The other children were
gibbering in their animal innocence. ‘The sailors,
their knives half concealed, grinned at each other
ot cursed. Otto, his brows knotted, stood with
his eyes fixed on the steamer.
She feared everybody, she hated everybody.
Matgaret was whispering something to Edward,
and he nodded. Again panic seized her. What
was Margaret telling him? Had she told every
one? Did they all know? Were they all play-
ing with her, deceiving her by pretending not to
know, waiting their own time to burst their revela-
tion on her and punish her in some quite un-
imaginably awful way ?
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Had Margaret told? If she crept up behind
Margaret now, and pushed her in the sea, might
she yet be in time ?—But even as she thought it,
she seemed to see Margaret rising waist-high out
of the waves, telling the whole story to everybody
in a calm, dispassionate voice, and climbing back
on board.
In another flash she saw the fat, comfortable |
petson of her mother, standing at the door of
Ferndale, abusing the cook.
Again her eyes roamed round the sinister
reality of the schooner. She suddenly felt sick to
death of it all: tired, beyond words tired. Why
must she be chained for ever to this awful life ?
Could she never escape, never get back to the ~
ordinary life little girls lead, with their papas and
mamas and... birthday cakes P
Otto called her. She went to him obediently :
though with a presentiment that it was to her
execution. He turned, and called Margaret too.
She was in a more attentive mood than she had
been the other night with the captain, Heaven
knows! But Otto was too preoccupied to notice
how frightened her eyes were.
Jonsen had no easy task on the steamer: but
Otto did not greatly relish his own. He did not
know how to begin—and everything depended on
his success.
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“See here,’ he burst out. ‘ You’re going to
England.’
Emily shot him a quick glance. ‘Yes?’ she
said at last: her voice showing merely a polite
interest.
‘The captain has gone onto that steamboat to
atrange about it.’
‘Aren’t we Staying with you any longer,
tnen?;
‘No,’ said Otto: ‘ you ’re going home on that
steamboat.’
‘ Shan’t we see you any mote, then?’ Emily
pursued.
‘No,’ said Otto : ‘—Well, some day, perhaps.’
‘ Are they all going, or only us two ?’
‘Why, all of you, of course !’
‘Oh. I didn’t know.’
There was an awkward silence, while Otto
wondered how to tackle the real problem.
‘Had we better go and get teady?’ asked
Margaret.
‘ Now listen!’ Otto interrupted her. ‘ When
you get on board, theyll ask you all about
everything. They ’ll want to know how you got
here.’
‘ Are we to tell them ?’
Otto was astonished she took his point so
readily.
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‘No,’ he said. ‘The captain and me don’t
want you to. We want you to keep it a secret,
do you see?’
* What are we to say, then?’ Emily asked.
“Tell them . . . you were captured by pirates,
and then . . . they put you ashore at a little port
in Cuba ‘
“—Where the Fat Woman was ?’
“—Yes. And then we came along, and took
you on board our schooner, which was going to
America, to save you from the pirates.’
“T see,’ said Emily.
“You ’ll say that, and keep the . . . other a
secret P’ Otto asked anxiously.
Emily gave him her peculiar, gentle stare.
“Of course!’ she said.
Well, he had done his best ; but Otto felt heavy
at heart. That little cherub! He didn’t believe
she could keep a secret for ten seconds.
“Now: do you think you can make the little
ones understand P ’
“Oh yes, I "Il tell them,’ said Emily easily. She
considered for a moment : ‘I don’t suppose they
remember much anyway. Is that all ?’
‘That ’s all,’ said Otto: and they walked
away.
“What was he saying?’ Margaret asked.
‘ What was it all about P ’
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‘Oh shut up!’ said Emily rudely. “It’s
nothing to do with you!’
But inwardly she did not know whether she
was on het head or her heels. Were they really
going to let her escape? Weren’t they just tantal-
ising her, meaning to stop her at the last moment ?
Were they handing her over to strangers, who had
come to hang her for murder? Was her mother
pethaps on that steamer, come to save her? But
she loved Jonsen and Otto: how could she bear
to part with them? The dear, familiar schooner.
... All these thoughts in her head at once! But
she dealt firmly enough with the Liddlies :
“Come on!’ she said. ‘ We’re going on that
steamer.’
“Are we to do the fighting ?’ Edward asked,
timorously enough.
‘There isn’t going to be any fighting,” said
Emily. 3
‘ Will there be another circus P’ asked Laura.
Then she told them they were to change ships
again.
When Captain Jonsen came back, mopping the
sweat from his polished forehead with a big cotton
handkerchief, he seemed in a terrible hurry. As
for the children, they were so excited they wete
ready to tumble into the boat: in such a flurry
they neatly tumbled into the sea instead. Now
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they knew why they had been washed and
combed.
It did not seem at first as if there was going to be
any difficulty about getting them started. But it
was Rachel who began the break-away.
“My babies! My babies!’ she shrieked, and
began running all over the ship, routing out bits
of tag, fuzzy rope-ends, paint-pots .. . her arms
were soon full.
* Here, you can’t take all that junk!’ dissuaded
Otto.
“Oh but my darlings, I can’t leave you behind ! ’
cried Rachel piteously. Out rushed the cook, just
in time to retrieve his ladle—and a battle-royal
began. |
Naturally, Jonsen was on tenterhooks to be
gone. But it was essential they should part on
good terms.
José was lifting Faura over the side.
* Darling José\’ she burst out suddenly, and
twined her arms tightly round his neck.
At that Harry and Edward, who were already
in the boat, scrambled back on deck. They had
forgotten to say good-bye. And so each child
said good-bye to each pitate, kissing him and
lavishing endearments on him.
“Go on! Go on!’ muttered Jonsen im-
patiently.
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Emily flung herself in his arms, sobbing as if
~ her heart would break.
‘Don’t make me go!’ she begged. “ Let me
Stay with you always, always!’ She clung tight
to the lapels of his coat, hiding her face in his
chest: ‘ Oh, I don’t want to go!’
Jonsen was strangely moved: for a moment,
almost toyed with the idea.
But the others were already in the boat.
‘Come on!’ said Otto, ‘ or they "Il go without
you!?
‘Wait! Wait!’ shrieked Emily, and was over
the side and in the boat in a flash.
Jonsen shook his head confusedly. For this
last time, she had him puzzled.
But now, as they rowed across to the steamer,
all the children stood up in the boat, in danger of
tumbling out, and cried :
“Good-bye! Good-bye!’
‘ Adios!’ cried the pirates, waving sentimental
hands, and guffawing secretly to each other.
‘C-c-come and see us in England!’ came
Edwatd’s clear treble.
‘Yes!’ ctied Emily. ‘Come and stay with us!
All of you!—Promise you’ll come and stay
with us ! ’
‘All tight!’ shouted Otto. ‘Well come! ;
“Come soon!’
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_ * My babies!’ wailed Rachel. ‘I’ve lost most
all my babies ! ”
But now they were alongside the steamer: and
soon they were mounting a rope ladder to her
deck.
What a long way up it was! But at last they
were all on board.
The little boat returned to the schooner.
The children never once looked after it.
And well might they forget it. For exciting as
it had been to go onto a ship of any kind for the
first time, to find themselves on this steamer was
infinitely moreso. ‘The luxury of it! The white
paint! The doors! The windows! The stairs !
The brass !—A fairy palace, no: but a mundane
wonder of a quite unimagined kind.
But they had little time now to take in the
details. All the passengers, wild with ‘curiosity,
were gathered round them ina ring. As the dirty,
dishevelled little mites were handed one by one on
board, a gasp went up. ‘The story of the capture
of the C/orinda by as fiendish a set of buccaneers as
any in the past that roamed the same Caribbean was
well known: and how the little innocents on
board her had been taken and tortured to death
before the eyes of the impotent captain. To see
now face to face the victims of so foul a murder
was for them too a thrill of the first water,
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The tension was first broken by a beautiful
young lady in a muslin dress. She sank on het
knees beside little Harry, and folded him in her
delicate arms.
‘ The little angel!’ she murmured. * You poor
little man, what horrors you have been through !
How will you ever forget them ?’
As if that were the signal, all the lady passengers
fell on the astonished children and pitied them :
while the men, less demonstrative, stood around
with lumps in their throats.
Bewildered at first, it was not long before they
tose to the occasion—as children generally will,
when they find themselves the butt of indiscrimi-
nate adoration. Bless you, they were kings and
queens! ‘They wete so sleepy they could hardly
_ keep their eyes open: but they were not going to
bed, not they! They had never been treated like
this before. Heaven alone knew how long it
would last. Best not waste a minute of it.
It was not long before they ceased even to be
sutprised, became convinced that it was all their
tight and due. ‘They were very important people
—quite unique.
Only Emily stood apart, shy, answering ques-
tions uncomfortably. She did not seem to be
able to throw herself into her importance with
the same zest as the others.
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>
Even the passengers’ children joined in the fuss
and admiration: perhaps realising the oppor-
tunity which the excitement gave of avoiding
their own bed-time. They began to bring (prob-
ably not without suggestion) their toys, as offer-
ings to these new gods: and vied with each other
in their generosity.
A shy little boy of about her own age, eich
brown eyes anda nice smile, his long hair ‘benghied
smooth as silk, his clothes neat and sweet-smelling,
sidled up to Rachel.
‘What ’s your name?’ she asked him.
* Harold.’
She told him hers.
‘How much do you weigh ?’ he asked her.
“I don’t know.’
‘You look rather heavy. May I see if I can
lift you P’”
LSS.
He clasped his arms round her stomach from
behind, leant back, and staggered a few paces with
her. Then he set her down, the friendship
cemented.
Emily stood apart ; and for some reason every
one unconsciously respected her reserve, But
suddenly something seemed to snap in her heart.
She flung herself face-downwards on the deck—
not crying, but kicking convulsively. It was a
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huge gteat stewatdess who picked her up and
catried her, still quivering from head to foot,
down to a neat, clean cabin. There, soothing and
talking to her without ceasing, she undressed her,
and washed her with warm water, and put her
to bed.
Emily’s head felt different to any way it had
evet felt before: hardly as if it were her own. It
sang, and went round like a wheel, without so
much as with your leave or by your leave. But
her body, on the other hand, was more than usually
sensitive, absorbing the tender, smooth coolness
of the sheets, the softness of the mattress, as a
thirsty horse sucks up water. Her limbs drank in
comfort at every pore: it seemed as if she could
never be sated with it. She felt physical peace
soaking slowly through to her marrow: and
when at last it got there, her head became more
quiet and orderly too.
All this while she had hardly heard what was
said to her: only a refrain that ran through it all
made any impression, ‘ Those wicked men... men
. nothing but men. . . those cruel men...
Men! It was perfeétly true that for months
and months she had seen nothing but men. To
be at last back among other women was heavenly.
When the kind stewardess bent over her to kiss
her, she caught tight hold of her, and buried her
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
face in the warm, soft, yielding flesh, as if to sink
herself in it. Lord! How unlike the firm,
muscular bodies of Jonsen and Otto !
When the stewardess stood up again, Emily
feasted her eyes on her, eyes grown large and
warm and mysterious. ‘The woman’s enormous,
swelling bosom fascinated her. Forlornly, she
began to pinch her own thin little chest. Was it
conceivable she would herself ever grow breasts
like that—beautiful, mountainous breasts, that had
to be cased in a sort of cornucopia? Or even
firm little apples, like Margaret’s ?
Thank God she had not been borna boy! She
was overtaken with a sudden revulsion against the
whole sex of them. From the tips of her fingers
to the tips of her toes she felt female: one with
that exasperating, idiotic secret communion :
initiate of the yuvaiketov.
Suddenly Emily reached up and caught the
Stewardess by the head, pulling it down to her
close: began whispering earnestly in her ear.
On the woman’s face the first look of incredulity
changed to utter stupefaction, from stupefaction
to determination.
‘My eye!” she said at last. ‘ The cheek of the
rascals !_ The impudence !’
Without another word she slipped out of the
cabin. And you may imagine that the steamer
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captain, when he heard the trick that had been
played upon him, was as astonished as she.
For a few moments after she had gone Emily
lay Stating at nothing, a very curious expression
on her face indeed. ‘Then, all of a sudden, she
dropped asleep, breathing sweetly and easily.
But she only slept for about ten minutes : and
when she woke the cabin door was open, and in it
stood Rachel and her little boy friend.
‘ What do you want?’ said Emily forbiddingly.
‘ Harold has brought his alligator,’ said Rachel.
Harold stepped forward, and laid the little
creature on Emily’s coverlet. It was very small :
only about six inches long: a yearling: but an
exact miniature of its adult self, with the snub
nose and round Socratic forehead that distinguish
it from the crocodile. It moved jerkily, like a
clockwork toy. Harold picked it up by the tail :
it spread its paws in the air, and jerked from side
to side, more like clockwork than ever. ‘Then he
set it down again, and it stood there, its tongueless
mouth wide open and its harmless teeth looking
like grains of sand-paper, alternately barking and
hissing. Harold let it snap at his finger—it was
plainly hungry in the warmth down there. It
datted its head so fast you could hardly see it
move: but its bite was still so weak as to be pain-
less, even to a child.
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Emily drew a deep breath, fascinated.
‘ May I have him for the night ?’ she asked.
‘ All tight,’ said Harold: and he and Rachel
were summoned away by some one without.
Emily was translated into Heaven. So this was
an alligator! She was actually going to sleep
with an alligator! She had thought that to any
one who had once been in an earthquake nothing
really exciting could happen again : but then, she
had not thought of this.
There was once a girl called Emily, who slept with an
alligator...
In seatch of greater warmth, the creature high-
Stepped warily up the bed towards her face.
About six inches away it paused, and they looked |
each other in the eye, those two children.
The eye of an alligator is large, protruding, and
of a brilliant yellow, with a slit pupil like a cat’s.
A cat’s eye, to the casual observer, is expression-
less : though with attention one can distinguish in
it many changes of emotion. But the eye of an
alligator is infinitely more stony and brilliant—
reptilian.
What possible meaning could Emily find in such
aneye? Yetshe lay there, and stared, and Stared :
and the alligator stared too. If there had been an
obsetver it might have given him a shiver:to see
them so—well, eye to eye like that.
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Presently the beast opened his mouth and hissed
again gently. Emily lifted a finger and began to
rub the corner of his jaw. ‘The hiss changed to a
sound almost like a purr. A thin, filmy lid first
covered his eye from the front backwards, then
the outer lid closed up from below.
Suddenly he opened his eyes again, and snapped
on her finger: then turned and wormed his way
into the neck of her night-gown, and crawled down
inside, cool and rough against her skin, till he
found a place to rest. It is surprising that she
could stand it as she did, without flinching.
Alligators are utterly untamable.
iv
From the deck of the schooner, Jonsen and
Otto watched the children climb onto the steamer :
watched their boat return, and the steamer get
under way.
So: it had all gone without a hitch. No one
had suspected his story—a story so simple as to be
very nearly the truth.
‘They were gone.
Jonsen could feel the difference at once: and
it seemed almost as if the schooner could. A
schooner, after all, is a place for men. He stretched
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
himself, and took a deep breath, feeling that a
cloying, enervating influence was lifted. José
was industriously sweeping up some of Rachel’s
abandoned babies. He swept them into the lee-
scuppets. He drew a bucket of water, and dashed
it at them over the deck. The trap swung open—
whew, it was gone, all that truck !
‘ Batten down that fore-hatch!’ ordered Jonsen.
The men all seemed lighter of heart than they
had been for many months : as if the weight they
wete telieved of had been enormous. They sang
as they worked, and two friends playfully pum-
melled each other in passing—hard. The lean,
masculine schooner shivered and plunged in the
freshening evening breeze. A shower of spray
for no particular reason suddenly burst over the
bows, swept aft and dashed full in Jonsen’s
face. He shook his head like a wet dog, and
grinned.
Rum appeared : and for the first time since the
encounter with the Dutch steamer all the sailors
got bestially drunk, and lay about the deck, and
were sick inthe scuppers. José was belching like
a bassoon,
It was dark by then. The breeze dropped
away again. ‘The gafts clanked aimlessly in the
calm, with the motion of the sea: the empty sails
flapped with reports like cannon, a hearty applause,
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Jonsen and Otto themselves remained sober, but
they had not the heart to discipline the crew.
The steamer had long since disappeared into the
dark, ‘The foreboding which had oppressed Jon-
sen all the night before was gone. No intuition
told him of Emily’s whispering to the stewardess :
of the steamer, shortly after, meeting with a
British gunboat: of the long series of lights
flickering between them. ‘The gunboat, even
now, was fast overhauling him: but no premoni-
tion disturbed his peace.
He was tired—as tired as a sailor ever lets him-
self be. The last twenty-four hours had been hard.
He went below as soon as his watch was over, and
climbed into his bunk.
But he did not, at once, sleep. He lay for a
while conning over the step he hadtaken. It was
really very astute. He had returned the children,
undoubtedly safe and sound: Marpole would be
altogether discredited. Even to have landed them
at Santa Lucia, his first intention, could never have
closed the C/orinda episode so completely, since the
world at large would not have heard of it: and
it would have been difficult to produce them,
should need arise.
Indeed, it had seemed to be a choice of evils:
either he must carry them about always, as a
proof that they were alive, or he must land them
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and lose control of them. In the first case, their
presence would certainly connect him with the
Clorinda piracy, of which he might otherwise go
unsuspected: in the second, he might be. con-
victed of their murder if he could not produce
them.
But this wonderful idea of his, now that he had
carried it out successfully, solved both difficulties.
It had been a near thing with that little bitch
Margaret, though . . . lucky the second boat had
picked her up... .
The light from the cabin lamp shone into the
bunk, illuminating part of the wall defaced with
Emily’s puerile drawings. As they caught his eye
a frown gathered on his forehead: but as well a
sudden twinge affected his heart. He remembered
the way she had lain there, ill and helpless. He
suddenly found himself remembering at least forty
things about her—an overwhelming flood of
memories.
The pencil she had used was still among the
bedding, and his fingers happened on it. There
were still some white spaces not drawn on.
Jonsen could only draw two things : ships, and
naked women. He could draw any type of ship
he liked, down to the least detail—any particular
ship he had sailed in, even. In the same way he
could draw voluptuous, buxom women, also down
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to the least detail: in any position, and from any
point of view: from the front, from the back,
from the side, from above, from below : his fore-
shortening faultless. But set him to draw any
third thing—even a woman with her clothes on—
and he could not have produced a scribble that
would have been even recognisable. _
He took the pencil: and before long there
began to appear between Emily’s crude uncertain
lines round thighs, rounder bellies, high swelling
bosoms, all somewhat in the manner of Rubens.
At the same time his mind was still occupied
with tefle@ions on his own astuteness. Yes, it
had been a near thing with Margatet—it would
have been awkward if, when he returned the
patty, there had been one missing.
A tecolleGion descended on his mind like a cold
douche, something he had completely forgotten
about till then. His heart sank—as well it might :
‘Hey!’ he called to Otto on the deck above.
‘What was the name of that boy who broke his
neck at Santa? Jim—Sam—what was he called?’
Otto did not answer, except by a long-drawn-
out whistle.
243
Chapter 10
MILY grew quite a lot during the passage
to England on the steamer: suddenly shot
up, as children will at that age. But she
did it without any gawkiness : instead, an a€tual
increase of grace. Her legs and arms, though
longer, did not lose any of the nicety of their shape;
and her grave face lost none of its attra@tiveness
by being a fraction nearer your own. The only
drawback was that she used to get pains in the
calves of her legs, now, and sometimes in her
back : but those of course did not show. (They
were all provided with clothes by a general col-
leétion, so it did not matter that she grew out of
her old ones.)
She was a nice child: and being a little less shy
than formerly, was soon the most popular of all
of them. Somehow, no one seemed to cate very
much for Margaret : old ladies used to shake their
heads over her a good deal. At least, any one
could see that Emily had infinitely more sense.
You would never have believed that Edward
after a few days’ washing and combing would look
such a little gentleman.
After a short while Rachel threw Harold over,
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- to be uninterrupted in her peculiar habits of pat-
thenogenesis, eased now a little by the many
presents of realdolls. But Harold became soon just
as firm friends with Laura, young though she was.
Most of the steamer children had made friends
with the seamen, and loved to follow them about
at their romantic occupations—swabbing decks,
and so on. One day, one of these men aétually
went a short way up the rigging (what little there
was), leaving a glow of admiration on the deck
below. But all this had no glamour for the
Thorntons. Edward and Harry liked best to peer
in at the engines : but what Emily liked best was
to walk up and down the deck with her arm round
the waist of Miss Dawson, the beautiful young
lady with the muslin dresses : of stand behind her
while she did little water-colour compositions of
toppling waves with wrecks foundering in them,
or mounted dried tropical flowers in wreaths
round photographs of her uncles and aunts. One
day Miss Dawson took het down to her cabin and
showed her all her clothes, every single item—it
took hours. It was the opening of a new world
to Emily. |
The captain sent for Emily, and questioned het :
but she added nothing to that first, crucial burst of
confidence to the stewatdess. She seemed struck
dumb—with terror, or something: at least, he
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could get nothing out ofher. So he wisely let her
alone. She would probably tell her story in her
own time: to her new friend, perhaps. But this
she did not do. She would not talk about the
schooner, or the pirates, or anything concerning
them: what she wanted was to listen, to drink in
all she could learn about England, where they
were really going at last—that wonderfully exotic,
romantic place.
Louisa Dawson was quite a wise young person
for her years. She saw that Emily did not want
to talk about the horrors she had been through:
but considered it far better that she should be
made to talk than that she should brood over them
in sectet. So when the days passed and no con-
fidences came, she set herself to draw the child out.
She had, as everybody has, a pretty clear idea in
her own head of what life is like in a pirate vessel.
That these little innocents should have come
through it alive was miraculous, like the three
Hebrews in the fiery furnace.
‘ Where used you to live when you were on the
schooner ?? she asked Emily one day suddenly.
‘Oh, in the hold,’ said Emily nonchalantly,
‘Is that your Great-uncle Vaughan, did you
say 2”
In the hold. She might have known it.
Chained, probably, down there in the darkness like
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A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
blacks, with rats tunning over them, fed on bread
and water.
‘Were you very frightened when there was a
battle going on? Did you heat them fighting
over yout head ?’. .
Emily looked at her with het gentle stare : but
kept silence.
Louisa Dawson was vety wise in thus trying to
ease the load on the child’s mind. But also she
was consumed with curiosity. It exasperated het
that Emily would not talk.
There were two questions which she particu-
larly wanted to ask. One, however, seemed
insuperably difficult of apptoach. The other she
could not contain.
‘ Listen, darling,’ she said, wrapping her arms
round Emily. ‘ Did you ever a@tually see any one
killed ?’
Emily stiffened palpably. “ Oh no,’ she said.
‘ Why should we ?’
‘ Didn’t you ever even see a body ?’ she went
on: ‘A dead one ?’
‘No,’ said Emily, ‘thete weren’t any.’ She -
seemed to meditate a while. ‘There weten’t
many,’ she corrected.
‘You poor, poor little thing,’ said Miss Dawson,
stroking her forehead.
But though Emily was slow to talk, Edward
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was not. Suggestion was hardly necessary. He
soon saw what he was expected to say. It was
also what he wanted to say. All these rehearsals
with Harry, these springings into the main rigging,
these Stormings of the galley . . . they had seemed
real enough at the time. Now, he had soon no
doubt about them at all. And Harry backed
him up. .
It was wonderful for Edward that every one
seemed ready to believe what he said. Those who
came to him for tales of bloodshed were not sent
empty away.
Nor did Rachel contradi&@ him. The pirates
were wicked—deadly wicked, as she had good
reason to know. So they had probably done all
Edward said: probably when she was not looking.
Miss Dawson did not always press Emily like
this : she had too much sense. She spent a good
deal of her time simply in tying more firmly the
knots of the child’s passion for her.
She was ready enough to tell her about England.
But how strange it seemed that these humdrum
narrations should interest any one who had seen
such romantic, terrible things as Emily had !
She told her all about London, where the traffic
was so thick things could hardly pass, where
things drove by all day, as if the supply of them
would never come to an end. She tried also to
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describe trains, but Emily could not see them,
somehow : all she could envisage was a Steamer
like this one, only going on land—but she knew
that was not right.
What a wonderful person her Miss Dawson
was! What marvels she had seen! Emily had
again the feeling she had in the schoonet’s cabin :
how time had slipped by, been wasted. Now she
would be eleven in a few months: a great age:
and in all that long life, how little of interest or
significance had happened to her! ‘There was her
Earthquake, of course, and she had slept with an
allieator : but what were these compared with the
experiences of Miss Dawson, who knew London
so well it hardly seemed any longer wonderful to
her, who could not even count the number of
times she had travelled in a train P
Her Earthquake . . . it was a great possession,
Dated she tell Miss Dawson about it? Was it
possible that it would raise her a little in Miss
Dawson’s esteem, show that even she, little Emily,
had had experiences? But she never dared.
Suppose that to Miss Dawson earthquakes were as
familiar as railway trains: the fiasco would be
unbearable. As for the alligator, Miss Dawson
had told Harold to take it away as if it was a worm,
Sometimes Miss Dawson sat silently fondling
Emily, looking now at her, now at the other
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children at play. How difficult it was to imagine
that these happy-looking creatures had been, for:
months together, in hourly danger of their lives!
Why had they not died of fright? She was sute
that she would have. Or at least gone Stark,
staring, taving mad P
: She had always wondered how people survived
even a moment of danger without dropping dead
with fear: but months and months... and chil-
dren. . . . Her head could not srallant it.
As for that other question, how dearly she”
would have liked to ask it, if only she could have
devised a formula delicate enough.
Meanwhile Emily’s passion fot her was nearing
its crisis ; and one day this was provoked. Miss
Dawson Wied Emily three times, and told her in
future to call her Lulu.
Emily jumped as if shot. Call this goddess by
her Christian name? She burnt a glowing vet-
milion at the very thought. The Christian names
of all grown-ups were sacred: something never
to be uttered by childish lips: to do so, the most
blasphemous disrespect.
For Miss Dawson to tell her to do so was as
embarrassing as if she had seen written up in
‘church, PLEASE SPIT.
Of course, if Miss Dawson told her to call her
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Lulu, at least she must not call her Miss Dawson
any mote. But say... the Other Word aloud,
her lips refused.
And so for some time, by elaborate subterfuges,
she managed to avoid calling her anything at all.
But the difficulty of this increased in geometrical
progression : it began to render all intercourse an
intolerable strain. Before long she was avoiding -
Miss Dawson.
Miss Dawson was terribly wounded: what
_ could she have done to offend this strange child ?
(‘ Little Fairy-girl,’ she used to call her.) The
darling had seemed so fond of her, but now. . .
So Miss Dawson used to follow her about the
ship with hurt eyes, and Emily used to escape
from her with scarlet cheeks. They had never
had a real talk, heart to heart, again, by the time
the steamer reached England.
il
When the steamer took in her pilot, you may
imagine that her news travelled ashore ; and also,
that it quickly reached the T7mes newspaper.
Mr. and Mrs. Bas-Thornton, after the disaster,
unable to bear Jamaica any longer, had sold Fern-
dale for a song and travelled straight back to
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England, where Mr. Thornton soon got posts as
London dramatic critic to various Colonial news-
papers, and manipulated rather remote influences
at the Admiralty in the hope of getting a punitive
expedition sent against the whole island of Cuba.
It was thus the T7mes which, in its quiet way, broke
the news to them, the very morning that the
steamer docked at Tilbury. She was a long time
doing it, owing to the fog, out of which the
gigantic noises of dockland reverberated unin-
telligibly. Voices shouted things from the quays.
Bells ting-a-linged. The children welded them-
selves into a compact mass facing outwards, an
improvised Argus determined to miss nothing
whatever. But they could not gather really what
anything was about, much less everything.
Miss Dawson had taken charge of them all,
meaning to convey them to her Aunt’s London
house till their relations could be found. So now
she took them ashore, and up to the train, into
which they climbed.
‘ What are we getting into this box for P’’ asked
Harry: ‘Is it going to rain ?’”
It took Rachel several journeys up and down
the steep steps to get all her babies inside.
The fog, which had met them at the mouth of
the tiver, was growing thicker than ever. So
they sat there in semi-darkness at first, till a man
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came and lit the light. It was not very comfort-
able, and horribly cold: but presently another
man came, and put in a big flat thing which was
hot: it was full of hot water, Miss Dawson said,
and for you to put your feet on.
Even now that she was in a train, Emily could
hardly believe it would ever start. She had be-
come quite sure it was not going to when at last it
did, jerking along like a cannon-ball would on a
leash.
Then their powers of observation broke down.
For the time they were full. So they played Up-
Jenkins riotously all the way to London: and
when they arrived hardly noticed it. They were
quite loath to get out, and finally did so into as
thick a pea-soup fog as London could produce at
the tail end of the season. At this they began to
wake up again, and jog themselves to remember.
that this really was England, so as not to miss
things. .
They had just realised that the train had run
tight inside a sort of enormous house, lit by
haloed yellow lights and full of this extraordinary
orange-coloured ait, when Mrs. Thornton found
them... -
‘Mother!’ cried Emily. - She had not known
she could be so glad to see her. As for Mrs.
Thornton, she was far beyond the bounds. of
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hysteria. The little ones held back at first, but
soon followed Emily’s example, leaping on her
and shouting : indeed it looked more like Aeon
with his hounds than a mother with her children :
their monkey-like little hands tore her clothes in
pieces, but she didn’t care a hoot. As for their
father, he had totally forgotten how much he
disliked emotional scenes. —
*Islept with an alligator |!’ Emily was shouting
at intervals. ‘Mother! I’ve slept with an
alligator !
Margaret stood in the background holding all
their parcels. None of her relations had appeared
at the station. Mrs. Thornton’s eye at last took
her in.
“Why, Margaret . . .’ she began vaguely.
Margaret smiled and came forward to kiss her.
“Get out!” cried Emily fiercely, punching her
in the chest. ‘ She’s wy mother !’
“Get out!” shouted allthe others. ‘ She ’s our
mother ! ’
Margaret fell back again into the shadows : and
Mrs. ‘Thornton was too distracted to be as shocked
as she would normally have been.
Mr. Thornton, however, was just sane enough
to take in the situation. ‘Come on, Margaret !’”
he said. ‘ Margaret ’s my pal! Let’s go and look
for a cab!’
>
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He took the girl’s arm, bowing his fine
shoulders, and walked off with her up the plat-
form.
They found a cab, and brought it to the scene,
and they all got in, Mrs. Thornton just remembet-
ing to say ‘ How-d’you-do-good-bye’ to Miss
Dawson.
Packing themselves inside was difficult. It
was in the middle of it all that Mrs. Thornton
suddenly exclaimed :
“But where ’s John ?’
The children fell immediately silent.
“Where is he P—Wasn’t he on the train with
you P’
“No,’ said Emily, and went as dumb as the
rest.
Mts. Thornton looked from one of them to
another.
‘John! Where is John?’ she asked the world
at large, a faint hint of uneasiness beginning to
tinge her voice.
It was then that Miss Dawson showed a puzzled
face at the window.
* John?’ she asked. ‘ Why, who is John ?’”
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
ili
The children passed the spring at the house
their father had taken in Hammersmith Terrace,
on the borders of Chiswick : but Captain Jonsen,
Otto, and the crew passed it in Newgate.
They were taken there as soon as the gunboat
which apprehended them reached the Thames.
The children’s bewilderment lasted. London
was not what they had expected, but it was even
more astounding. From time to time, however,
they would realise how this or that did chime in
with something they had been told, though not at
all with the idea that the telling had conjured up.
On these occasions they felt something as Saint
Matthew must have felt when, after recounting
some trivial incident, he adds : ‘ ‘That it might be
fulfilled which was spoken by the Prophet So-
and-So.’
‘Why look!’ exclaimed Edward, * Thete’s
only toys in this store ! ’
‘ Why, don’t you remember . . .” began Emily.
Yes, their mother had told them, on a visit to
their father’s general store in St. Anne’s, that in
London there were stores which not only sold toys
but which sold toys only. At that time they
hatdly knew what toys were. A cousin in
England had once sent them out some expensive
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wax dolls, but even before the box was opened the
wax had melted : consequently the only dolls they
had wete empty bottles, which they clothed with
bits of rag. These had another advantage over
the wax kind: you could feed them, poking it
into the neck... If you put in some water too, in
a day or so the food began to digest, visibly. The
bottles with square shoulders they called He-
beasties, and the bottles with round shoulders
they called She-beasties.
Their other toys wete mostly freakish sticks, and
different kinds of seeds and berries. No wonder
it seemed strange to them to imagine these things
inashop. But the idea engaged them, neverthe-
less. Down by the bathing-hole there were
several enormous cotton-trees, which lift them-
selves on their roots right out of the earth, as on
stilts, making a big cage. One of these they
dubbed their toy-shop : decorated it up with lace-
bark, and strings of bright-coloured seeds, and
theit other toys: then they would go inside and
take turns to sell them to each other. So now
this. was the piture the phrase‘ toy-shop ’ evoked
in them... No wonder the London kind was a
surprise to them, seemed a very far-fetched fulfil-
ment of the prophecy. )
The houses in Hammersmith are tall, roomy,
comfortable houses, though not big or aristo-
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ctatic, with gardens running right down to the
tiver.
It was a shock to them to find how dirty the
river was. ‘The litter-Strewn mud when the tide
was out somehow offended them much less than —
the sewery water when it was up. At low tide
they would often climb down the wall and
scrounge about in the mud for things of value to
them happily enough. ‘They stank like polecats
when they came up again. Their father was
sensible about dirt. He ordered a tub of water
to be kept permanently outside the basement door,
in which they must wash before entering the
house: but none of the other children in the
terrace were allowed to play in the mud at all.
Emily did not play in the mud either: it was
only the little ones.
Mr. Thornton was generally at a theatre till the
small hours ; and when he came home used to sit
and write, and then he would go out, about dawn,
to the post. The children were often awake in
time to hear him going to bed. He drank whisky
while he worked, and that helped him to sleep all:
the morning (they had to be quiet too). But he
got up for luncheon, and then he often had battles
with their mother about the food. She would try
to make him eat it.
All that spring they were an object of wonder to
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their acquaintances, as they had been on the
Steamer ; and also an object of pity. In the wide
world they had become almost national figures :
but it was easier to hide this from them then than
it would be nowadays. But people—friends—
would often come and tell them about the pirates :
what wicked men they were, and how cruelly they
had maltreated them. Children would generally
ask to see Emily’s scar. They were especially
sorry for Rachel and Laura, who, as being the
youngest, must have suffered most. These people
used also to tell them about John’s heroism, and
that he had died for his country just the same as if
he had grown up and become a real soldier : that
he had shown himself a true English gentleman,
like the knights of old were and the martyrs.
They were to grow up to be very proud of John,
who though still a child had dared to defy these
villains and die rather than allow anything to
happen to his sisters.
The glorious deeds which Edward would
occasionally confess to were still recetved with an
admiration hardly at all tempered with incredulity.
He had the intuition, by now, to make them always
done in defiance of Jonsen and his crew, not, as
formerly, in alliance with or superseding them.
The children listened to all they were told : and
according to their ages believed it. Having as
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yet little sense of contradi&tion, they blended it
quite easily in their minds with their own mem-
ofies ; of sometimes it even cast their memories
out. Who wete they, children, to know better
what had happened to them than grown-ups ?
_ Mrs. Thornton was a feeling, but an essentially
Christian woman. The death of John was a blow
to her from which she would never recover, as
indeed the death of all of them had once been.
But she taught the children in saying their prayers
to thank God for John’s noble end and let it
always be an example to them: and then she
taught them to ask God to forgive the pirates for
all their cruelty to them. She explained to them
that God could only do this when they had been
properly punished on earth. ‘The only one who
could not understand this at all was Lauta—she
was, after all, rather young. She used the same’
form of words as the others, yet contrived to
imagine that she was praying to the pirates, not
for them; so that it gradually came about that
whenever God was mentioned in her hearing
the face she imagined for Him was Captain
Jonsen’s.
Once more a phase of their lives was receding
into the past, and crystallising into myth.
Emily was too old to say her prayers aloud, so
no one could know whether she put in the same
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phase as the others about the pirates or not. No
one, in point of fa&, knew much what Emily was
thinking about anything, at that time. ©
iv
One.day a cab came for the whole family, and
they drove together right into London, The cab
took them into the Temple: and then they had
to walk through twisting passages and up some
Stairs. .
It was a day of full spring, and the large room
into which they were ushered faced south. The
windows were tall and heavily draped with cur-
tains. After the gloomy Stairs it seemed all sun-
shine and warmth. There was a big fire blazing,
and the furniture was massive and comfortable,
the dark carpet so thick it clung to their shoes.
A young man was standing in front of the fire
when they came in. He was very correétly, in-
deed beautifully dressed: and he was very hand-
some as well, like a prince. He smiled at them all
pleasantly, and came forward and talked like an
old friend. The suspicious eyes of the Liddlies:
soon accepted himas such. He gave their parents
cake and wine: and then he insisted on the chil-
dren being allowed a sip too, with some cake,
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which was vety kind of him. The taste of the
wine recalled to all of them that blowy night in
Jamaica: they had had none since.
Soon some more people arrived. They were
Margaret and Harry, with asmall, yellow, fanatical-
looking aunt. The two lots of children had not
seen each other for a long time: so they only said
Hallo to: each other very perfundorily. Mr.
Mathias, their host, was just as kind to the new
arrivals.
Every one was at great pains to make the visit
appear a casual one; but the children all knew
more or less that it was nothing of the sort, that
something was presently going to happen. How-
ever, they could play-a& too, Rachel climbed
onto Mr. Mathias’s knee. They all gathered
round the fire, Emily sitting bolt upright on a
foot-stool, Edward and Laura side by side in a
capacious arm-chair.
In the middle of every one talking there was a
pause, and Mr. Thornton, turning to Emily, said,
“Why don’t you tell Mr. Mathias about your
adventures ?’”
“Oh yes!’ said Mr. Mathias, ‘ do tell me all
about it. Let me see, you’re .. 2”
‘Emily,’ whispered Mr. Thornton.
“Age?”
SbeDe,
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Mr. Mathias reached for a piece of clean paper
and a pen.
“ What adventures ?” asked Emily clearly.
“Well,” said Mr. Mathias, ‘you Started for
England on a sailing-ship, didn’t you? ‘The
Clorinda ?”
“Yes. She was a barque.’
“ And then what happened ? ’
She paused before answering.
“ There was a monkey,’ she said judicially.
“A monkey ?’
* And a lot of turtles,’ put in Rachel.
‘Tell him about the pirates,’ prompted Mrs.
Thornton. Mr. Mathias frowned at her slightly :
“ Let her tell it in her own words, please.’
“Oh yes,’ said Emily dully, ‘ we were captured
by pirates, of course.’
Both Edward and Laura had sat up at the word,
Stiff as spokes.
* Weren’t you with them too, Miss Fernandez ?’”
Mt. Mathias asked.
Miss Fernandez! Every one turned to see who
he could mean. He was looking at Margaret.
“Me?” she said suddenly, as if waking up.
“Yes, you! Goon!” said her aunt.
* Say yes,’ prompted Edward. ‘ You were with
us, weren’t you ?’
Yes,’ said Margaret, smiling.
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“Then why couldn’t you say so?’ heétored
Edward. ;
Mr. Mathias silently noted this curious treat-
ment of the eldest: and Mrs. Thornton. told
Edward he mustn’t speak like that.
‘ Tell us what you remember about the capture,
will you ?’ he asked, still of Margaret.
‘ The what ?’
* Of how the pirates captured the Clorinda,
She looked round nervously and laughed, ‘but
said nothing.
‘The monkey was in the rigging, so they just
came on the ship,’ Rachel volunteered.
“Did they—er—fight with the sailors? Did
you see them hit anybody : ? Or threaten any-
body ?? Aa
‘Yes!’ cried Edward, and jumped up from his
chair, his eyes wide and inspired. ‘ Bing! Bang !
Bong!’ he declared, thumping the seat at each
wotd ; then sat down again.
‘They didn’t,’ said Emily.. ‘Don’t tie silly,
Edward.’
‘Bing, bang, bong,’ he repeated, with less
conviction. .
‘ Bung!’ contributed Harry to his support,
from under the arm of the fanatical aunt.
‘Bim-bam, bim-bam,’ sing-songed Laura, sud-
denly waking up and Starting a tattoo of her own.
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‘Shut up!’ cried Mr. Thornton. ‘ Did you,
ot did you not, any of you, see them hit any-
body ?’
“Cut off their heads!’ cried Edward. * And
throw them in the sea !—Far, far . . .” his eyes
became dreamy and sad.
* They didn’t hit anybody,’ said Emily, ‘ There
wasn’t any one to hit.’ .
‘Then where were all the sailors 2? asked Mr.
Mathias.
‘ They were all up the rigging,’ said Emily.
“I see,’ said Mr. Mathias. ‘ Er—didn’t you
say the monkey was in the rigging ?’”
“He broke his neck,’ said Rachel. Shewrinkled
up her nose disgustedly : ‘ He was drunk.’
‘ His tail was rotted,’ explained Harry.
~ © Well,’ said Mr. Mathias, ‘ when they came on
board, what did they do P’
There was a general silence. »
- *Come, come! What did they'do?—What did
they do, Miss Fernandez ?’
“TIT don’t know.’
Emily ??
“I don’t know.’ }
He sat back in despair ; ‘ But you'saw them ! ’
“No we didn’t,’ said Emily, ‘ we went in the
deck-house.’ Ee
* And stayed there ? ’”
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“We couldn’t open the door.’
* Bang-bang-bang !’ Laura suddenly rapped out.
“Shut up!’
* And then, when they let you out ?”
“We went on the schooner.’
‘Were you frightened P ”
* What of ?’
‘Well’: them.’
“Who ?’
* The pirates.’
‘Why should we ?’
* They didn’t do anything to frighten you ? ”
‘To frighten us 2’
“Coo! José did belch!’ Edward interjected
merrily, and began giving an imitation. Mfrs.
Thornton chid him.
“Now,” said Mr. Mathias gravely, ‘there ’s
something I want you to tell me, Emily. When
you were with the pirates, did they ever do any-
thing you didn’t like? You know what I mean,
something nasty ?’
“Yes!” cried Rachel, and every one turned to
her. ‘He talked about drawers,’ she said in a
shocked voice.
“What did he say ?’
“He told us once not to toboggan down the
deck on them,’ put in Emily uncomfortably.
“Was that all P”
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* He shouldn’t have talked about drawers,’ said
Rachel.
“Don’t you talk about them, then,’cried Edward:
© Smarty !’
“Miss Fernandez,’ said the lawyer diffidently,
“have you anything to add to that ?’
“What P”
“Well . . . what we are talking about.’
She looked from one person to another, but
said nothing.
“I don’t want to press you for details,’ he said
gently, ‘but did they ever—well, make sugges-
tions to you ?’
Emily fixed her glowing eyes on Margaret,
catching hers.
“It’s no good questioning Margaret,’ said the
Aunt morosely ; ‘ but it ought to be perfedlly clear
to you what has happened.’
“Then I am afraid I must,’ said Mr. Mathias.
* Another time, perhaps.’
Mrs. Thornton had for some while been frown-
ing and pursing her lips, to stop him.
* Another time would be much better,’ she said :
and Mr. Mathias turned the examination back to
the capture of the Clorinda.
But they seemed to have been strangely un-
observant of what went on atound them, he
found,
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Vv
- When the others had all gone, Mathias offered
Thornton, whom he liked, a cigar: and the two
sat together for a while over the fire.
‘Well,’ said Thornton, ‘ did the interview go
as you had expected ? ’ ,
* Pretty much,’
“I noticed you questioned them chiefly about
the Clorinda. But you have got all the informa-
tion you need on that score, surely ?’
‘Naturally I did. Anything they affirmed I
could check exaétly by Marpole’s detailed affidavit.
I wanted to test their reliability.’
* And you found ?’
“What I have always known. That I would
rather have to extract information from the devil
himself than from a child.’
* But what information, exaétly, do you want ??
‘Everything. The whole story.’
‘You know it.’ a
Mathias spoke with a dash of exasperation :
_ *Do you tealise, Thornton, that without con-
siderable help from them we may even fail to get
a conviction P’”
“ What is the difficulty i ?’ asked Thornton in a
peculiar, restrained tone.
“We could get a conviction for piracy, of
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coutse. But since ’37, piracy has ceased to be
a hanging offence unless it is accompanied by
murder.’
* And is the killing of one small boy insufficient
to count as murder ?” asked Thornton in the same
cold voice.
Mathias looked at him curiously.
“We can guess at the probabilities of what
happened,’ he said. ‘ The boy was undoubtedly
taken onto the schoonet; and now he can’t be
found. But, stri@ly speaking, we have no ptoof
that he is dead.’
* He may, of course, have swum actoss the Gulf
of Mexico and landed at New Orleans.’
Thornton’s cigar, as he finished speaking,
snapped in two.
“I know this is . . .? began Mathias with pto-
fessional gentleness, then had the sense to check
himself. ‘I am afraid there is no doubt that we
can personally entertain that the lad is dead: but
there is a legal doubt : and where there is a legal
doubt a jury might well refuse to convict.’
‘ Unless they were carried away by an attack of
common sense.’
Mathias paused for a moment before asking :
* And the other children have dropped, as yet,
no hint as to what precisely did happen to him ?’
* None.’
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‘ Their mother has questioned them ? ’
* Exhaustively.’
“Yet they must surely know.’
“It is a great pity,’ said Thornton, deliberately,
“that when the pirates decided to kill the child,
they did not invite in his sisters to watch.’
Mathias was ready to make allowances. He
merely shifted his position and cleared his voice.
‘Unless we can get definite evidence of murder,
either of your boy or the Dutch captain, I am afraid
there is a very real danger of these men escaping
with their lives: though they would of course be
transported.—It’s all highly unsatisfactory, Thorn-
ton,’ he went on confidentially. ‘ We do not, as
lawyers, like aiming at a conviction for piracyalone.
It is too vague. ‘The most eminent jurists have
not even yet decided on a satisfactory definition
of piracy. I doubt, now, if they ever will. One
school holds that it is any felony committed on the
High Seas. But that does little except render a
separate term otiose. Moreover, it is not accepted
by other schools of thought.’
‘ To the layman, at least, it would seem to be a
queer sort of piracy to commit suicide in one’s
cabin, or perform an illegal operation on the
captain’s daughter ! ’
‘Well, you see the difficulties. Consequently
we always prefer to make use of it simply as a
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make-weight with another mote serious charge.
Captain Kidd, for instance, was not, stri@tly speak-
ing, hanged for piracy. The first count in his
indiétment, on which he was condemned, sets
forth that he feloniously, intentionally, and with
malice aforethought hit his own gunner on the
head with a wooden bucket value eightpence.
That is something definite. What we need is
something definite. We have not got it. Take the
second case, the pitacy of the Dutch steamer. We
are in the same difficulty there: a man is taken
on board the schooner, he disappears. What
happened? We can only surmise.’
‘Isn’t there such a thing as turning King’s
Evidence ? ’
‘Another most unsatisfactory proceeding, to
which I should be loath to have recourse. No,
the natural and proper witnesses are the children.
There is a kind of beauty in making them, who
have suffered so much at these men’s hands, the
instruments of justice upon them,’
Mathias paused, and looked at Thornton
‘nattowly.
“You haven’t been able, in all these weeks, to
get the smallest hint from them with regard to
the death of Captain Vandervoort either ??
* None.’
‘ Well, is it your impression that they do truly
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know nothing, or that they have been terrorised
into hiding something ?’
Thornton gave a gentle sigh, almost of relief.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think they have been
terrorised. But I do think they may know some-
thing they won’t tell.’
* But why ?’
‘Because, during the time they were on the
schooner, it is plain they got very fond of this
man Jonsen, and of his lieutenant, the man called
Otto.’
Mathias was incredulous.
“Is it possible for children to be mistaken in a
man’s whole nature like that ?’
The look of irony on Thornton’s face attained
an intensity that was almost diabolical.
‘I think it is possible,’ he said, ‘ even for chil-
dren to make such a mistake.’
‘But this... affection : it is highly improbable.’
“It is a fact.’ .
Mathias shrugged. After all, a criminal lawyer
is not concerned with faés. He is concerned
with probabilities. It is the novelist who is con”
cerned with facts, whose job it is to say what a
particular man did do on a particular occasion :
the lawyer does not, cannot be expected to go
further than to show what the ordinary man would
be most likely to do under presumed circumstances.
272
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Mathias, as he conned these paradoxes, smiled
to himself a little grimly. It would never do to
give utterance to them.
‘I think if they know anything I shall be able to
find it out,’ was all he said.
* D’you mean to put them in the box ?’ Thorn-
ton asked suddenly.
‘Not all of them, certainly: Heaven forbid!
But we shall have to produce one of them at least,
T am afraid.’
“Which ?’
‘Well. We had intended it to be the Fer-
nandez girl. But she seems . . . unsatisfaétory ?’
* Exaétly.? Then Thornton added, with a chat-
acteristic forward jerk: ‘She was sane enough
when she left Jamaica.—Though always a bit of
a fool.’
“Her aunt tells me that she seems to have lost
het memory : of a great part of it. No, if I call
her it will simply be to exhibit her condition,’
Phen ?’
‘I think I shall call your Emily.’
Thornton stood up.
* Well,’ he said, ‘ you ’Il have to settle with her
yourself what she’s to say. Write it out, and
make her learn it by heart.’
‘ Certainly,’ said Mathias, looking at his finger-
nails, ‘Iam not in the habit of going into court
275
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
unprepared.—It’s bad enough having a child in
the box anyway,’ he went on.
Thornton paused at the door.
“—You can never count on them. They say
what they think you want them to say. And then
they say what they think the opposing counsel
wants them to say too—if they like his face.’
Thornton gesticulated—a foreign habit.
‘I think I will take her to Madame Tussaud’s
on Thursday afternoon and try my luck,’ ended
Mathias: and the two bade each other good-bye.
vi
Emily enjoyed the wax-works ; even though
she did not know that a wax-work of Captain
Jonsen, his scowling face bloody and a knife in his ©
hand, was already in contemplation. She got on
well with Mr. Mathias. She felt very grown-up,
going out at last without the little ones endlessly
tagging. Afterwards he took her to a bun-shop
in Baker Street, and tried to persuade her to pour
out his tea for him: but she turned shy at that,
and he had in the end to do it for himself.
Mr. Mathias, like Miss Dawson, spent a good
deal of his time and energy in courting the child’s
liking. He was at least sufficiently successful for
274
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
it to come as a complete surprise to her when
presently he began to throw out questions about
the death of Captain Vandervoort. ‘Their studied
casualness did not deceive her for a moment. He
learnt nothing : but she was hardly home, and his
cattiage departed, than she was violently sick.
Presumably she had eaten too many cream buns.
But, as she lay in bed sipping from a tumbler of
water in that mood of fatalism which follows on
the heels of vomiting, Emily had a lot to think
over, as well as an opportunity of doing so with-
out emotion.
Her father was spending a rate evening at home:
and now he stood unseen in the shadows of her
bedroom, watching her. To his fantastic mind,
the little chit seemed the stage of a great tragedy :
and while his bowels of compassion yearned
towards the child of his loins, his intelle@ was
delighted at the beautiful, the subtle combination
of the contending forces which he read into the
‘situation. He was like a powerless stalled audi-
ence, which pities unbearably, but would not on
any account have missed the play.
But as he stood now watching her, his sensitive
eyes communicated to him an emotion which was
not pity and was not delight; he realised, with a
sudden painful shock, that he was afraid of her !
But surely it was some trick of the candle-light,
a7)
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
ot of her indisposition, that gave her face moment-
arily that inhuman, stony, basilisk look ?
Just as he was tiptoeing from the room, she
burst out into a sudden, despairing moan, and
leaning half out of her bed began again an in-
effectual, painful retching. Thornton persuaded
her to drink off her tumbler of water, and then
held her hot moist temples between his hands till
at last she sank back, exhausted, in a complete
passivity, and slipped off to sleep.
There were several occasions after this when
Mr. Mathias took her out on excursions, or simply
came and examined her at the house. But still he
learnt nothing.
What was in her mind now? I can no longer
read Emily’s deeper thoughts, or handle their
cords. Henceforth we must be content to sur-
mise. ,
As for Mathias, there was nothing for it but to
accept defeat at her hands, and then explain it
away to himself. He ceased to believe that she
had anything to hide, because, if she had, he was
convinced she could not have hidden it,
But if she could not give him any informa-
tion, she remained, spectacularly speaking, a most
valuable witness. So, as Thornton had suggested,
he set his clerk to copy out in his beautiful hand a
276
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
sort of Shorter Catechism: and this he gave to
Emily and told her to learn it.
She took it home and showed it to her mother,
who said Mr. Mathias was quite right, she was to
learn it. So Emily pinned it to her looking-glass,
and learnt the answers to two new questions every
morning. Her mother heard her these with her
other lessons, and badgered her a lot for the
sing-song way she repeated them. But how can
one speak naturally anything learnt by heart, Emily
wondered ? It is impossible. And Emily knew
this catechism backwards and forwards, inside and
out, before the day came.
Once more they drove into town : but this time
it was to the Central Criminal Court. ‘The crowd
outside was enormous, and Emily was bundled
in with the greatest rapidity. The building was
impressive, and full of policemen, and the longer
she had to wait in the little room where they were
shown, the mote nervous she became. Would
she remember her piece, or would she forget it ?
From time to time echoing voices sounded down
the corridors, summoning this person or that.
Her mother stayed with her, but her father only
looked in occasionally, when he would give some
news to her mother inalow tone. Emily had her
catechism with her, and read it over and over,
277
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Finally a policeman came, and conduéted them
into the court.
A criminal court is a very curious place. The
seat of a ritual quite as elaborate as any religious
one, it lacks in itself any impressiveness or symbol-
ism of archite@ure. A robed judge in court looks
like a catholic bishop would if he were to cele-
brate mass in some municipal bath-house. There
is nothing to make one aware that here the Real
Presence is: the presence of death.
As Emily came into court, past the many men
in black gowns writing with their quill pens, she
did not at first see judge, jury, or prisoners. Her
eye was caught by the face of the Clerk, where he
sat below the Bench. It was an old and very
beautiful face, cultured, unearthly refined. His
head laid back, his mouth slightly open, his eyes
closed, he was gently sleeping.
That face remained etched on her mind as she
was shown her way into the box. The Oath,
which formed the opening passages of her cate-
chism, was administered; and with its familiar
phrases her nervousness vanished, and with com-
plete confidence she sang out her responses to the
familiar questions which Mr. Mathias, in fancy
dress, was putting to her. But until he had
finished she kept her eyes fixed on the rail in front
of her, for fear something should confuse her,
278
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
At last, however, Mr. Mathias sat down; and
Emily began to look around her. High above
the sleeping man sat another, with a face even
more refined, but wide awake. His voice, when
now he spoke a few words to her, was the kindest
she had ever heard. Dressed in his strange dis-
guise, toying with a pretty nosegay, he looked like
some benign old wizard who spent his magic in
doing good.
Beneath her was the table where so many other
wigged men were sitting. One was drawing
funny faces: but his own was grave. ‘Two more
wete whispering together.
Now another man was on his feet. He was
shorter than Mr. Mathias, and older, and in no
way good-looking or even interesting. He in
turn began to ask her questions.
He, Watkin, the defending counsel, was no fool.
He had not failed to notice that, among all the
questions Mathias had put to her, there had been
no reference to the death of Captain Vandervoort.
That must mean that either the child knew noth-
ing of it—itself a valuable lacuna in the evid-
ence to establish, or that what she did know was
somehow in his clients’ favour. Up till now he
had meant to pursue the obvious tactics—ques-
tion her on the evidence she had already given,
perhaps frighten her, at any rate confuse her and
279
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
make her contradié herself. But any one, evena
jury, could see through that. Nor was there any
hope, under any circumstances, of a total acquittal:
the most he could hope for was escape from the
murder charge.
He suddenly decided to change his whole policy.
When he spoke, his voice too was kind (though
it lacked ‘perforce the full benign timbre of the
judge’s). He made no attempt to confuse her.
By his sympathy with her, he hoped for the sym-
pathy, himself, of the court.
His first few questions were of a general nature :
and he continued them until her answers were
given with complete confidence.
“Now, my dear young lady,’ he said at last.
* There is just one more question I want to ask
you: and please answer it loudly and clearly, so
that we can all hear. We have been told about
the Dutch steamer, which had the animals on
board. Now a very horrible thing has been
suggested. It has been said that a man was taken
off the steamer, the captain of it in fa&, onto the
schooner, and that he was murdered there. Now
what I want to ask you is this. Did you see any
such thing happen ?’
Those who were watching the self-contained
Emily saw her turn very white and begin to
tremble, Suddenly she gave a shriek ; then after
280
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
a second’s pause she began to sob. Every one
listened in an icy stillness, their hearts in their
mouths. Through her tears they heard, they all
heard, the words: ‘. . . He was all lying in his
blood... he was awful! He... he died, he said
something and then he died!’
That was all that was articulate. Watkin sat
down, thunderstruck. The effect on the court
could hardly have been greater. As for Mathias,
he did not show surprise: he looked mote like a
man who has digged a pit into which his enemy
has fallen.
The judge leant forward and tried to question
her: but she only sobbed and screamed. He
tried to soothe her: but by now she had become
too hysterical forthat. She had already, however,
said quite enough for the matter in hand: and
they let her father come forward and lift her out
of the box.
As he stepped down with her she caught sight
for the first time of Jonsen and the crew, huddled
up together ina sort of pen. But they were much
thinner than the last time she had seenthem. The
terrible look on Jonsen’s face as his eye met hers,
what was it that it reminded her of ?
Her father hurried her home. As soon as she
was in the cab she became herself again with a
surprising rapidity. She began to talk about all
281
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
she had seen, just as if it had been a patty: the
man asleep, and the man drawing funny faces, and
the man with the bunch of flowers, and had she
said her piece properly ?
‘Captain was there,’ she said. ‘Did you see
him ?’ .
* What was it all about P’ she asked presently.
“Why did I have to learn all those questions ?’
Mr. Thornton made no attempt to answer her
questions : he even shrank back, physically, from
touching his child Emily. His mind reeled with
the many possibilities. Was it conceivable she
was such an idiot as really not to know what it was
all about? Could she possibly not know what
she had done? He stole a look at her innocent
little face, even the tear-stains now gone. What
was he to think P
But as if she read his thoughts, he saw a faint
cloud gather.
* What are they going to do to Captain?’ she
asked, a faint hint of anxiety in her voice.
Still he made no answer. In Emily’s head the
Captain’s face, as she had last seen it . . . what
was it she was trying to remember ?
Suddenly she burst out :
‘Father, what happened to Tabby in the end,
that dreadful windy night in Jamaica ?’
282
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
vil
Trials ate quickly over, once they begin. It
was no time before the judge had condemned
these prisoners to death and was trying some
one else with the same concentrated, benevolent,
individual attention.
Afterwards, a few of the crew were reprieved
and transported.
The night before the execution, Jonsen man-
aged to cut his throat : but they found out in time
to bandage him up. He was unconscious by the
morning, and had to be carried to the gallows ina
chair: indeed, he was finally hanged in it. Otto
bent over once and kissed his forehead; but he
was completely insensible.
It was the negro cook, however, according to
the account in the T7mes, who figured most promi-
nently. He showed no fear of death himself, and
tried to comfort the others.
‘ We have all come here to die,’ he said. ‘ That?
(pointing to the gallows) ‘was not built for
nothing. We shall certainly end our lives in this
place: nothing can now save us. But in a few
years we should die in any case. In a few years
the judge who condemned us, all men now living,
willbe dead. You know that I die innocent : any-
thing I have done, I was forced to do by the rest of
283
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
you. But I am not sorry. I would rather die
now, innocent, than in a few years perhaps guilty
of some great sin.’
Vill
It was a few days later that term began, and
Mr. and Mts. Thornton took Emily to her new
school at Blackheath. While they remained to
tea with the head mistress, Emily was introduced
to her new playmates.
* Poot little thing,’ said the mistress, ‘ I hope she
will soon forget the terrible things she has been
through. I think our girls will have an especially
kind corner in their hearts for her.’
In another room, Emily with the other new
girls was making friends with the older pupils.
Looking at that gentle, happy throng of clean
innocent faces and soft graceful limbs, listening to
the ceaseless, artless babble of chatter rising,
perhaps God could have picked out from among
them which was Emily: but I am sure that I
could not.
FINIS
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61
. FABLES é4y T. F. Powys.
The first unlimited edition of a book which The Sunday
Times rightly called ‘a work of art.’
62. THE GUERMANTES WAY, vol. 1
é éy Marcer Proust.
‘Translated by c. k. scorr MoncrIEFF. ‘Where mortal
can extract the essence, this translator has done so.’ Te
Times Literary Supplement.
63.. THE GUERMANTES WAY, vol. 2
éy Marcet Proust.
‘Translated by c. K. scorr MONCRIEFF ‘into distinguished
English.” The Times Literary Supplement.
Spring, 1931:
. 64. BRIEF CANDLES 4y Atpous Huxtey.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
Containing ‘Chawdron,’ “The Rest Cure,’ “The Claxtons,’
and ‘After the Fireworks.’
‘THE CHARTERHOUSE OF PARMA 4y Srenpuat.
. K, SCOTT MONCRIEFF’s magnificent translation, in one
volume of 720 pages.
HOW ABOUT EUROPE? é4y Norman Douctas.
‘It compels you to think. . . . _It compels you to laugh.’
Arnold Bennett in The Evening Standard.
SELECTED POEMS OF COVENTRY PATMORE.
Edited with a preface by his grandson, Derek Prtmore.
THE JOURNAL OF A DISAPPOINTED MAN
by W.N. P. Barsextion.
Now recognized as one of the most enduring books of the
century. ‘Will be devoured by thousands.’ The Nation.
AN ANTHOLOGY OF 181 CENTURY POETRY
dy W. J. Turner.
A collection made by a distinguished modern poet.
CHATTO & WINDUS
97 & 99 St. Martin’s Lane, W.C.2
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